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DSLR attached to ETX90. LiveView image of 2015 partial eclipse on Canon 40D

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 I try to log my observing and related activities in a regular blog - sometimes there will be a delay but I usually catch up. An index of all my blogs is on the main menu at the top of the page with daily, weekly or monthly views. My Twitter feed is below. I am also interested in photograping wildlife when I can and there is a menu option above to look at some of my images. I try to keep the news feeds from relevant astronomical sources up to date and you will need to scroll down to find these.

The Celestron 14 is mounted on a Paramount ME that I have been using for about 10 years now - you can see that it is mounted on a tripod so is a portable set up. I still manage to transport it on my own and set it all up even though I have just turned 70! It will run for hours centering galaxies in the 12 minute field even when tripod mounted.

 

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Tuesday
Feb182014

Day 7 CGEM Setup on the Terrace Part One

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A grey start to the day - dry but cloudy- seems to be improving slowly.  Perhaps the good weather is waiting for the Moon to get out of the way - also New Mexico, California and Siding Spring in Australia seem to be clouded out so I decided to set up the CGEM on the terrace.

First the tripod

then I adjusted the tripod with the equatorial head peg in the North direction.

 

 

and I levelled the tripod

 

 

and placed the equatorial head onto the tripod

 

 and tightened up the tripod brace

 

 

 

and checked the tripod level on the tripod bubble

 

 then used my iphone to get my current location in Latitude and Longitude

 so that I could set the latitude scale to the correct position.

I then screwed in the counterweight shaft

 

 

and added the counterweight

 

and the 4" refractor OTA

 and then balanced the OTA tube

 

 

and the OTA/counterweight. Both axes clamps untightened at this balance point.

 

The next thing to do was to insert the bolts for the azimuth adjustment of the equatorial head. This shows the locating hole for the first bolt

 

and the bolt in place. This bolt if screwed in will move the head towards the East(Clockwise).

 

 

The other bolt is shown here and if screwed in would move the head towards the West(anticlockwise).

 

I then attached the handset to the Southern leg of the tripod as shown

 

 

and plugged it into the panel