First impressions...

Jun 24, 2003

I’ve taken the opportunity the last few nights to work a bit with my newly reworked LX200. After having undergone the bearing replacement it takes some time to get things setup correctly so that the GOTO precision returns.  I’m happy to report that the scope is performing much better now and I’m really close to getting my GOTO pointing back. After spending some time adjusting the forkarms to get the proper level, I’m hitting objects within 15-20 arc minutes in polar mode, not far from the way it performed before the bearing replacement. I’ll continue work on it and see if I can make it even better.

The new bearings are smooth! From what I’ve heard of the newer GPS version, Meade incorporates needle bearings into the fork arms, something they should have done with the classic version. It’s nice to watch the unlocked OTA flip around without friction. The DEC drive sure seems to appreciate it. The Dec motor sounds much more quieter now though I’m getting some noise in the RA bearings. I might have to replace those too, but that’ll be an easy fix, if I can find replacement bearings.

After using MaxIm DL/CCD over the last three days I must say that I’m VERY IMPRESSED. It is very intuitive and very bullet-proof. Hasn’t crashed yet, something which I’ve grown to expect with CCDSoft and even The SKY, though those programs have improved since running them in Win98 emulation (I use XP).

MaxIm mixes in scope controls (with an object library), camera control, and image processing. Stacking images are a snap, working automatically, similarly to programs like Registar and Picture Window. I haven’t felt the need to start up The Sky software to control my scope because MaxIm does that as well. But the beautiful thing about MaxIm is its ability to set up image sequences without having to reacquire the guide star each time.  It’s a really great feature and something that CCDSoft and CCDOps needs to incorporate. The Lucy Richardson deconvolution algorithm is slick as well.

My seeing has been HORRIBLE lately. Temperatures have been in the middle 80s throughout the night and the humidity isn’t far from 80%. I managed a few pictures but nothing to be excited about. The tracking CCD doesn’t like it when the star hops around all the time because of the unstable atmosphere.

The picture to the right of M57, the Ring Nebula, is a result of my experimentation.  Seeing steadied up just a bit to give me this stack of five 30 second exposures, binned 2x2 on my ST-7E. I performed the LR deconvolution on it (10 iterations). Not too bad considering my autoguider was hopping all over the place on almost everything I was shooting. It sure makes calibration difficult. Guiding corrections were all over the place but at least the LX200 was performing to par.  Skies were not very transparent, even with the moon below the horizon.  I was fighting some cirrus clouds the whole time. Visibly was only 3 magnitude at the time of this sequence.

I should take delivery of the Tak FSQ-106 at the first of next week. I’m looking forward to seeing what this thing can do.