My Astronomy

 

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My Telescopes

My Main Telescope - C14 and Paramount ME

My new Paramount MyT and 8-inch Ritchey-Chretien Telescope

MyT Hand Controller

My Meade 12 inch SCT on a CGEM (Classic) Mount

My 4 inch Meade Refractor with Sky Watcher Guidescope and ZWO camera on a CGEM (Classic) Mount

Skywatcher Star Adventurer Mount with Canon 40D

 

My Solar setup using a DSLR and Mylar Filter on my ETX90

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

Astronomy Blog Index
About the Site

 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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« Day 104 Friday 4th July 2014 C14 out of action. | Main | Day 102 Wednesday 2nd July 2014 Solar Flares from Andy Devey, NGC 6188, NGC 6334, Pluto from Siding Spring. »
Thursday
Jul032014

Day 103 Thursday 3rd July 2014 Spain and Australia Pluto Images compared.

I put together my original Pluto image from my C14 with the image from Siding Spring yesterday to confirm that the object originally imaged was in fact Pluto. I was unable to image Pluto on the C14 last night  to confirm. Of course I had to turn the Siding Spring image upside down to match!

Unfortunately the images do not overlap to be able to show the movement - thus the above image.

I was unable to use my C14 to take another Pluto image because I decided to check polar alignment again with a drift align and the mount started to "beep" near the meridian. When I switched the mount off and on again the dec motor was fine but the RA motor was unable to run and the dreaded beeps restarted each time. Normally this is due to mount imbalance but this was not the case - raising the worm from the RA gear removed all load but the RA motor still stalled and set off the alarm. trying to sort the problem out in the dark was not possible.