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First Light - Starizona SCT Corrector III

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 10/13/2024 -- Configuring the venerable Meade LX10 2000mm/F10 SCT with a new 2" visual back and the Starizona SCT Corrector III.  Set up spacers to ~1mm of the 83.8mm backfocus needed with the Svbony 405cc camera (based on a total required backfocus of 90.3mm for the SCT Corrector.  Skies were very poor with huge moon and clouds... but was anxious for first light to see how this new corrector performed.  The mount was nominally polar aligned from previous work (10/12) with the Celestron 10" newtonian attempting to fix collimation (only partially successful).  Reworked the counterweights and checked the balance of the LX10, spacers, RACI guider with Zwo ASI120MC-S and SCT corrector.  Then worked to achieve focus... which was ultimately successful (after cranking the focus to the left substantially).  Views of stars in the M31 area looked uniform and round across the whole field.   Set up a job in the scheduler for the center of M31 with 80x40s light frames (repeating until 04
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CN10 testing on a M31 Mosaic

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 09/08/2024 -- Testing the venerable Celestron 10" F4.7 Newtonian on the Celestron CGEM DX on the dolly with the Svbony 405cc, the Baader RCCI Rowe Coma Corrector and no other filters.  Initial configuration completed on 09/07, but found the balance wrong. Rotated the OTA in the rings to position the camera & finder facing down towards the mount.  This showed immediate improvements with a rapid calibration in PHD2 as well as within the Indi/Ekos guider calibration tab as well.  Conditions were reasonable with no moon and clear skies. Clear Dark Sky seeing forecast for 09/08-09/09 showing no cloud cover but marginal seeing conditions expected. Indi Allsky camera pseudo-sky quality metric captured on 09/08/2024 around 11pm showing a jSQM of ~4600 at 11 (dropping to ~4300 at 11:50pm). Meteoblue seeing forecast for 09/08-09/09/2024 showing few clouds expected overnight. Started a capture of 40x60s lights on NGC 6960 (Western Veil Nebula) in the scheduler set to run until 2:45am...
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Test: CGM DX mount on a tripod dolly

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 08/21/24 -- testing out a new Proaim Lineo Portable Video Camera Floor Dolly as a mechanism to easily move the mount in and out. Removed the rubber feet from the Meade Vintage Field Tripod and removed the adapter for spiked tripod feet from the Proaim...which allowed the Meade tripod feet to fit securely braced inside the dolly...which provided opportunity to really lock the tripod legs so that the whole mount is secure and free from vibration. Set up the LX10 with the dual-narrowband filter with the SVBony 405c and the 0.63 Meade focal reducer.  Ensured the mount on the dolly was level... then performed an initial rough alignment using the cell phone compass... this produced an initial polar alignment error (shown in PHD2 running on the Odroid XU4) as ~53' (not bad for a rough guess). Initial testing was stymied for hours at first from problems with the Gl.iNet gl-mt300a (Azure) wireless mini router which connects the Odroid XU4 telescope control computer to the local wireless ne
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