DeepskyWim

The week following the new moon of June, we could enjoy very hot weather in Belgium.  The skies were clear, so there were some opportunities to observe.  The main problem during this period of the year is that the astronomical twilight never ends, which means that the sun never get below 18° the horizon.  This means that it never gets really dark... This can also be seen at the values of the SQM meter.  The highest I got was 20.09, while on the clear months in the past months, I sometimes had a value of 20.31.  On Monday June 22, I observed till 1:30.  I played with the ServoCAT and enjoyed some old friends: M 57, M 27, M 13, M 56, and the Veil Nebula.  I did not note down my observations, but I just enjoyed the views. The young moon on the evening of July 23 (Canon EOS R, 300mm F/5.6). On Tuesday June 23, I also observed.  I was a very warm night, so I could observe without a jacket.  The frogs were croaking a lot.  I turned the auto-align mode of the Argo Navis to off and the slewing

On June 11, the weather was not so good, but in the evening, the clouds suddenly went away.  As the predictions for the night were good, I took the Obsession outside to do some tests and observations.   The ServoCAT did follow the objects very good, but the slewing towards new objects was not very accurate...  I will need to do some fine tuning on the azimuth axis.  The encoder of the altitude axis did not change, so I don't suspect that the problem lies there. I did enjoy some showpiece objects.  The summer constellations were already high enough in the sky to enjoy the view of the Crescent nebula (ngc 6888), the Veil nebula, the Ring nebula (M57), M 13...  I also enjoyed some nice galaxies (like M 82).  The nights are very short this time of the year, so I did not observe for a long time.  The quality of the skies was less than during the previous observing nights.

On May 15, 2020, the  ServoCAT  arrived.  The installation did take some time, but thanks to the very good instruction documents and movies, everything went without problems. Installing the powered ground board The first step, and in my opinion also the step that took the most time, was to install the powered ground board.  Because the 18''  Obsession telescope has a triangular ground board, a new, round ground board was made. I bought birch plywood of quality B/BB, with a thickness of 18mm.  Most wood shops can provide the birch plywood, but probably you will need to ask explicitly for it.  Around ground board with a diameter of 58cm was made. The new ground board. The old ground-board can be removed by loosening the screw in the rocker box.  Don't forget to remove the washer. The screw to remove from the rocker box. Also remove the washer in the center! The old, triangular ground board is no longer needed. In one of the feet of the new ground-board, a hole should be dril

A nice 22°-halo was visible today!