As the nights get shorter up here at 51deg N Latitude, the observing season finishes. Two good star parties (Kelling Heath & Haw Wood Farm) allowed me to test some new ideas.
Quite a few others are building eFinders and ScopeDogs, and so quite a lot of time has gone into supporting their builds and commissioning. Much of this is helping people up the learning curve, but also a lot is overcoming faulty hardware - buck converters and ttl-2-usb adapter cables have been amongst the worst offenders. The moral is dont buy cheap, or you may well have to buy twice (at least!) and spend a lot of time fault finding.
I’ve finally produced a ScopeDog that doesn’t use encoders (or a DSC at all). I’m calling it 'ScopeDog Lite’. I was not optimistic at first as to how it would work in practice, but with the stunning fast solve time of the Pi5, its actually rather effective. Basically the ScopeDog uses motor steps to keep tabs on where it is pointing, with a plate-solve every so often to keep it accurate. Sounds easy, but it wasn’t and providing a stable wifi link to SkySafari was the most challenging.
I succumbed to the Seestar S50 temptation. I’m not getting into astrophotography but it great for using short gaps in the clouds. When I’m using my 18” it sits on the ground nearby as my little observing companion. I’ve been impressed for what you get and can achieve for the price.
Last month saw the 60th anniversary of Mustang production. Our club organised a massive meet at Brooklands Museum, about 800 amercian cars!
