Regulusastro Blog

I have been working hard this week to accomplish those goals that need doing while classes are out and time is somewhat abundant. One of my summer goals was to get the robotic observatory mount to accept autoguiding signals from the STL-6303 imager. The mount, a wonderful (and I can’t stress that enough) 2001 vintage Astro-Physics AP1200, can go for 10 minutes without guiding, but after that, a guidestar is needed to keep stars round.

Here’s the kicker. The STL-6303 will guide the mount with the regular cable and such, BUT the hand control unit must be plugged into the mount. The mount needs that control unit to remind it of the guide correction speed (0.25x siderial). That makes it interesting: autostarting and parking become, well a more difficult and not remotely doable task with that unit plugged in. I have no idea why. So I have been playing with that a lot, much to my skin’s dismay as even 100% DEET makes no dent in protecting me from the Exeter River Mosquito Ranch (ERMR).

Last night I went out again, soaked in DEET (and with 50+ bites on the back of my bod from the night before) to see if things had mysteriously changes or if I had missed something. Interestingly, Astro-Physics (did I tell you how good that mount is?) keeps all their legacy manuals online for astronomers to access. Thank you, Astro-Physics. There Astro-Physics Website should you want it. In the manual for our mount, there is mention of a cool feature that other mounts have: the ability to park, shut off completely, then at a later time, reboot and the mount remembers everything: site, time, position, current siderial position, etc, etc. Hmmm, is that turned on? No. NO! Wow – funny how that was missed. I turned it on. No more parking problems. That is one hurdle down.

Now the second hurdle and the final one: how to get the mount to remember its guide correction speed? Funny: it started working of its own accord without ever having worked before! Well, fine. No idea why. Fine. Maybe (and this is not in the manual) the mount remembers this stuff when the “remember everything else feature” is turned on. Well, lucky me either way.

Now, I walk in, turn the mount and everything else on, and away we go! Night time is a better place thanks to all this….. and all this just to allow longer than 10 minute integrations! Sometimes I wonder why we go through all the pains. Because we want to!