SMARTSCOPE News Flash: Sunday December 8, 2002

Fine Tuning The Telescope Components

Tonight saw more good progress. Chris, Tim and Hugh performed a 30-object TPoint mapping (as usual, Hugh volunteered for the tough job of running the computer, in the warmth of the room.) Some oddities occurred (perhaps due to the G.E. mount), but the model performed well.

After the work, some play, as various objects were selected, including Neptune (Hugh's first direct view of it), and the Ring Nebula (another first for Hugh.) Then on to the challenge of making the wide-field ST-237A CCD camera work, with Tim's 28mm lens. Nothing worked until Tim suggested cycling the power on the camera controller, and VOILA! a confusing series of 5 blobs that was supposed to be the Pleiades. As most of the Smartscope team know, Hugh is a bit of a pest with his camera, but tonight he proved it's more than a flash in the pan. He quickly got the Pentax lens focused, resulting in the image on the left (as a screen shot in MaximDL).

 On to the next milestone!.
 

This page last modified: December 15, 2002