It is a phenomenon universally acknowledged that when an amateur astronomer acquires a new telescope or major scientific instrument the local observing weather goes sour. And so with a heavy heart I announce the repair of my G11 mount and the purchase and delivery of a Mallincam Universe, a Celestron Edge HD C9.25, and a further mount, a Skywatcher AZ-EQ6. The current sky is clear, but tonight will be cloudy, or at best partly clear with a bright moon close to full. So I extend my apologies to all who would otherwise be taking an interest in the spring parade of galaxies. I will endeavor to do less in the future, and to continue to be properly grateful to my beautiful, gracious, and sylph-like spouse. Amen.

I’ve been unable to observe the stars visually for some time as a result of Fuchs’ Dystrophy, and I’ve been considering other ways to look through my ‘scopes for quite a while. One of the main paths I’ve been following is that of Video Astronomy, which essentially involves pointing a low-light video camera through the ‘scope and directing the output to a TV screen. There are several companies serving this line of astronomy, but the company which has always appealed to me the most is Rock Mallin’s Mallincam. The problem I have always had with any of the videocams, from Mallin or anyone else, is that the pixel resolution of the cameras generally falls in the NTSC or PAL ranges – for NTSC that’s 640×480 – which is a little too low for my taste.

Recently Mallin came out with t;he Mallincam Universe, a 6.1 mp camera which has a lot in common with the DSLR cameras I have been using. Its sensor is roughly the same size, but the software supplied with the camera gives a near-video experience – not live, but close to it. So I bought one.

It’s been cold out there, though, and I generally don’t observe in the cold. First light consisted of a brief look through the camera, hooked up to a tiny SV70 scope mounted on a photographic tripod. I successfully viewed the Moon – wheeee! Then I retreated back indoors, chilled to the bone. Real observing would require a bigger scope on a real astronomical mount. And that’s when my troubles really began…

I admit, I was eager to get started. Temperatures were finally above zero. The night was clear, and though I hadn’t prepared much, I didn’t expect any problems. The mount was tried and true, the camera was new but performed well on first light, and I had watched a number of videos explaining what to do with the camera and software. All I had to do was point the camera at Orion and grab a view of M42. What could go wrong?

As it turned out, very little actually went wrong, but it went wrong in a big way. Possibly as a result of the cold (it cooled down rapidly after sunset) the mount began to report a lag in RA motion, and eventually stalled. I fiddled a little. I fiddled a lot. The mount seemed fine. The cables were firm in their sockets and I had almost 14V of power, more than enough I turned everything back on and went through the startup process. Suddenly the mount took off in one direction, and wouldn’t stop until I pulled the power. I now have a runaway motor. Oops!

That’s about a $250 fix (new motor), and I could have gone ahead with that, but instead I decided to buy a new and lighter mount and trade in the old one in its current condition. I wouldn’t get full trade-in, but I could accept a small loss somewhere above the cost of repair. While I was at it I would sidegrade the ‘scope – same aperture, but with a flatter field and the opportunity to use Hyperstar. I took down the scope and mount and set off to Khan’s in Toronto, where I had just bought the camera.

When I got there, I was told I would have to order a mount before their technician would look at the scope, or pay for a couple of hours of the technician’s time – about $180. Before committing to the trade-in I wanted to know what they considered the mount and scope were worth – it would have affected what I would purchase, so I couldn’t order ahead of time. Considering I had just spent a couple of grand in the store for the camera, I was seriously annoyed, and decided instead to fix the mount and buy a new scope somewhere else. I may still replace the new mount, but not at Khan’s, and I’ll sell the old mount elsewhere. Send me a note if you have any interest in a Losmandy G11 with Gemini I controller.

Right now, though, I’m left without a fully-working mount, so it’ll be a while before I post any review of the Mallincam Universe. Ain’t this a fine mess I’ve put myself in? Hrrrmph!

With uncertain weather for the Transit of Venus, I decided to stay home rather than chase holes in the clouds in the hope of being able to observe the transit. Predictions for my home location were for clearing at least a little bit in the late afternoon, so I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.

I did a quick and dirty dry run last week to make sure everything was working in the observatory, but today it turned out to have been a little too quick. Everything worked, but few things worked properly. The pier has shifted over the winter, and required levelling. The mount tracks and slews properly, but the alignment is off (due to the shifting pier), and once the mount was levelled, the alignment was off even further. Consequently, though the mount tracks something, it doesn’t track the sun very well at all. I wanted to try the Lumix camera mounted a focally on the 110 mm refractor, but I had trouble locating the correct cable for the focuser, and when I tried to focus through the screen, it turned out to be just a touch too small. There’s no way of controlling the Lumix from a laptop, so I had to trigger the shutter manually – with all that implies for image sharpness.

Still, I was able to muddle through, and I’m fairly happy with the images I did manage to get before the clouds rolled over me. I will post at least one of the images (pre-second contact) and, I hope, a brief movie (second contact showing black drop effect). Right now everything is on the iPad though, and it may take a while – watch for a link!

It’s been in the 30s today, and my A/C is not working – looks as though there is some sort of start capacitor which has blown [yup! Simple fix, but still $110 - but no consequential damage], because the fan won’t start without help. I’m just wondering how long it has been running this way, and if there has been consequential damage to the rest of the unit. When I manually start the fan (by carefully spinning the blades) the fan keeps running, but there is no cool air coming out of the AC vents. I guess I’ll find out soon, as the HVAC folks are due for a maintenance check at the end of the week. That’s my hot and miserable start to the week.

Meanwhile, I’m just back from a visit with my daughter in Southern California. While I was there I happened to see that the Riverside Telescope Makers Conference (RTMC) was being held over the US’ Memorial Day weekend. I was due to jump on the plane home on Saturday, but I went up to the site on Wednesday and stayed until early Friday morning.

The weather was dry and pleasant during the day, and downright cold during the night. I fired up the new Astrotrac and took a few exposures, mostly of the region around Vega and a little south of Antares. There was a hulking great mountain to the south, so I didn’t see much point in trying for the southern sky. This was an impromptu exercise, and I wasn’t well prepared.

I was able to set up and align reasonably well. The first night I learned that it was better to set up with the tripod legs fully extended, as trying for a minimal extension resulted in greater stability but an aching back. I ran two image sequences up to about 1 am, but packed up when the wind picked up. I have no idea what the actual wind speeds were, but 50 mph gusts had been predicted, and it certainly sounded as though that was what came through.

The following night I set up with full extension and was much more comfortable in both the alignment and object selection processes. Unfortunately the second night I was exhausted – didn’t sleep well – and quit after only one image sequence.

Since I hadn’t expected to be observing – and certainly not imaging – I had nothing to process the images I captured, and didn’t have any capture software with me either. I captured using an intervalometer I had in my gadget bag, and didn’t capture any darks or flats. I don’t expect the final images to be impressive, but in any case I will post them when I have had a chance to stack them and remove the sky glow.

Shooting at f/4 and ISO 800, I felt comfortable with 4 minute exposures, but not at 5 minutes. Stars were nice and round after a couple of alignment tweaks, and I took sequences of 20 or so each time the Astrotrak fired up. I’m happy with that.

I was shooting with a 70-200 and a 24-105 lens, each with L glass, but I will have to check the EXIF data to see what the nominal focal lengths were for each series.

Seeing wasn’t great on either night, but I thought it was a little better the second night. Skies were fairly good, but I think Starfest skies are a little better. There was a bit of a light dome to the NNE (Las Vegas?) and on the second night another observer complained about the light dome from San Diego (?) to the SSE. The mountains seemed to do a fairly good job of blocking the lights of the greater Los Angeles area, but there was a lot of sky glow along the entire horizon. The site is just barely a borderline green zone on the sky pollution maps, while Starfest, as I recall it, is solidly green.

I’ll try to plan a little better next year so that I can attend the entire event (I missed the swap meet and just about all the vendors, which I normally enjoy at Star Parties). I also have permission to purchase equipment and leave it with my daughter, so I should be able to do more next time. It was a tiring event for me, but considering it was all catch-as-catch-can, I’m pretty satisfied with the way things went.

P.S. Access to the event site is via California Highway 38, a twisting little road full of hairpin turns with breath-taking drop-offs waiting for you if you take them too fast. White-knuckle driving for me, but long-time attendees told me “you get used to it.” Eek!