Antares Crayford & Sirius Mount Tests

It's been a good month since my defective Sirius mount was swapped out for a replacement, and it wasn't until tonight that I finally got a chance to use it. I'm not too pleased, frankly. There are paint chips all over it and a good sized gash on one of the panels; it looks as though it is a repacked factory second unit. And the polar alignment scope is so over-illuminated that it is impossible to see through it - all I see is a washed out red light. Plus, there is a high-pitched oscillating whistle emanating from the mount head which was not present in the original mount.

Not sure what can be done at this point, it's been a month since the swap (and two since the original purchase). I removed the polar scope and can see that the red LED is dead center in the optical path; maybe it needs to be repositioned. This is what I get for trying to save money, I suppose - I should have saved a little longer and bought the Vixen Sphinx. As my brother always says, "You buy shit, you get shit."

On a happier note, the new Crayford works very well. It has just enough back travel to focus all of my Vixen LVW eyepieces. I didn't try the Powermate or either camera (EOS & Neximage), but I primarily intend to use the 127mm as a visual instrument anyway. Worst case, I will need to buy an extender. I already need to buy one for my TV85, so it is moot.

Did the go-to alignment song and dance again with the Sirius. Tried 1-Star and 3-Star, neither worked very well. I need to get that Telrad mounted, and soon, because the straight finder scope is danger of going in the lake. Another week or two and I'll be able to see Polaris, so that should help with alignment. Until then, my hair is thinning rapidly. I wasn't planning on doing any real observing since it is a work night, but did get a few nice peeks at M31, M29 and M57 before packing it in.

Antares 127mm Crayford Upgrade

The biggest shortcoming of the stock Antares refractor is the rack and pinion focuser - very stiff, an unacceptable amount of play in the drawtube, and a visual back which uses metal set screws instead of a compression ring. To remedy this weak link, I ordered a new FRM2 dual-speed Crayford focuser from ScopeStuff for $149.00; mounting it to the Antares required the FRC7 5" adapter ring, an additional $44.00. The focuser is produced by GSO, though there are no markings on either piece.

For under $200, I believe I have transformed this scope dramatically from a visual-only instrument to something I might actually be able to use for imaging. I say "believe" because, along with the focuser, the mailman also delivered clouds and likely thunderstorms for the weekend, so field tests will have to wait. But my initial impressions are positive - very smooth feel, fairly nice construction. Surely not as nice as a Moonlite or FeatherTouch, but I just couldn't bring myself to spend $500-$600 on a focuser for a $300 OTA.

I'm a little concerned about back focus, the drawtube is not nearly as long as the stock R&P focuser. Whether this will allow enough range to work without an extension tube remains to be seen. I'm fairly certain that I will need some sort of extension for imaging with the DSLR, but it might be OK for visual use. We shall see...

Installation was not too difficult: I removed the three mounting screws and gently worked the stock focuser off the OTA. There was a strip of tape around the edge of the tube which had to be removed before the new 5" mounting ring would fit. The ring was supplied with three screws, washers, and nuts; I managed to secure them without dropping anything into the tube. Finally, the focuser mounted to the ring using the three screws from the original focuser - I would have preferred new screws because the original ones are the countersunk type.

In my haste to install the FRM2, I forgot to weigh it to compare with the stock focuser. I'm going to say it is slightly heavier, but I can't be sure. There are two tension screws on the underside between the knobs: One adjusts the tension of the drawtube - by loosening it completely, the drawtube can be completely disengaged and moved in and out by hand. The second screw locks the focuser and prevents the focus knobs from moving the drawtube. This works far better than the single tension screw system I've been accustomed to.

Other notes on GSO focusers:

• Hyper-tuning Your GSO Crayford
• JMI Motofocus for GSO Focusers
  

Observing: Clusters & Galaxies in And, Tri, Per & Cas

New moon Thursday night, cool and clear. It's TV85 time, because I don't feel like doing the big-scope setup and breakdown thing on a weeknight. It was dark already by 8:30pm, temp 51 deg, humidity 91% with dewpoint at 48 deg, so I thought it prudent to break out the dew zapper for the objective - I never got the heating element for eypieces but it seems to be OK as long as I keep the lens capped when I'm not looking through it. By midnight the temp dropped to 45 deg, humidity 97%, and dewpoint 44 deg - things started getting wet!


Despite the moon-free night the skies were still washed out from neighborhood lights and the Vernon light soup in the southeast. The lights next door finally went out around 10:30. I managed to get a peek at a few objects in the Andromeda-Triangulum-Perseus-Cassiopeia area of the sky:

• M33: So faint I had a hard time finding it.
• M31: Easy, with M110 visible above it.
• NGC-752: Open cluster, easily spotted though not very exciting.
• NGC-869/NGC-884 Double Cluster: Cleared the trees around 12:30am - simply stunning in the LVW42 and LVW22 Vixens!
• Stock 2: Just to the NW of the Double Cluster, very large.
• NGC-663: A little further MW, located about halfway between Epsilon and Delta Cassiopea (the two easternmost stars in the "W".
• M45 Pleiades: Another object that comes alive in the Vixen LVWs.

I bounced back and forth between these objects for a while. Just after 1am I packed it in for the night.

Starry Night Pro Plus 6

I received my Version 6 upgrade to Starry Night this week - spent the extra dough to move up from Pro to Pro Plus, which includes the AllSky images. Installation took up about 11gb of hard drive. First run showed that it did not save any of my preferecences such as rquipment, log entries, favorites, location. I managed to find some of the files in my user library prefs folder, but was only able to recover the equipment details. All of my favorites and log entries are gone. No big deal, I guess, but it would have been nice.

First impressions are somewhat favorable, but not mind-blowingly so. I like the AllSky CCD Mosaic, even though the resolution suffers at high magnifications. Speed seems a little sluggish compared to SNP5 on my 1GHz Powerbook G4. There are new star chart print features, which let you print a three-pane chart (one main chart, plus two finder charts); this could be useful. I like the Markers and Outlines feature which identify lunar and planetary features like craters, mare, and other surface details; however, even though multiple features can be selected, only one name shows at a time. I'm pretty sure this is not the way it's supposed to be. In any case, the high resolution lunar surface images are very good, and should make identification of craters in my lunar photographs easier in the future.

Eratosthenes & Montes Apenninus in Starry Night Pro Plus 6

A big problem was discovered while testing the remote control of the Sirius mount. I gave it an indoor test run on Friday night and found some serious problems, not the least of which is the software's inability to point the scope to whatever is at screen center - it either points somewhere else, or gives me a "Below Horizon" error message. Other little things like loss of connection between Mac and Sirius, disappearing cursor during scope control, andz inability to change default horizon graphics, were also noted. Reported all of this to SN Tech Support, they are handing it off to the scope interface guru. Hope to have an answer next week after the holiday. I don't remember having all of these problems with SNP5, but I never really used it much for remote control, either. Still, I'm fairly certain that, at the very least, SNP5 was able to slew to screen center...

Better graphics aside, I'm not sure the upgrade was worth the $120 it cost. A full list of all upgrade features can be found here.

Leo Fender, Astronomer

No, not really. But if Leo Fender ever did design a case just for binoculars, it would have looked just like this!

It's actually a case for harmonicas which had been kicking around the store for a while. I asked Joe what the deal was, he told me that it was locked and no key could open it, and that if I could open it I could have it. Five minutes and one bent paper clip later, it was mine. Wasn't sure what to use it for - eyepieces was my first thought, but I already have two cases for those. Then I realized it might be perfect for my Orion 10x50 binocs, and sure enough they fit like a glove. The tray on the right lifts out to give me additional storage for stuff like a red flashlight, pens, etc. The S&T Pocket Sky Atlas fits, too; might stitch a mesh pocket into the top lid to hold it snug.