Wind might be considered. For comfort, I use an easily detachable black artist board as the Sun glare and heat blocker. When light intermitent wind kicks up, a fixed panel can act as a sail and vibrate the PST. I use the artist board because I can easily pull it off, thus reducing the wind profile of the PST and mount. The separate camera stand with a sun blocker is the best for Sun protection and observing comfort, but is too much gear to haul around for my personal preferences. - Clear Skies - Kurt
I just remembered the folding chair that I used to use to watch my daughter's soccer games. It has a detachable umbrella/parasol on a universal mount. It can be swiveled into any required orientation. I think I just found my new PST observing chair! On Sun, Jun 14, 2009 at 7:17 PM, Canopus56 <canopus56@yahoo.com> wrote:
Wind might be considered. For comfort, I use an easily detachable black artist board as the Sun glare and heat blocker. When light intermitent wind kicks up, a fixed panel can act as a sail and vibrate the PST. I use the artist board because I can easily pull it off, thus reducing the wind profile of the PST and mount. The separate camera stand with a sun blocker is the best for Sun protection and observing comfort, but is too much gear to haul around for my personal preferences. - Clear Skies - Kurt
I finally had a chance to use the PST on my new GoTo mount. I went with the Orion Teletrack AZ-G. The PST fits perfectly and is well within the 9-lb. instrument limit for the mount. One seeming handicap is that the sun is not an alignment object in the database. However, I got around this by noting where the sun is currently, in relation to background stars that are in the alignment catalog. Today the sun was only a few degrees to the left of El Nath (Beta Tauri), so I aimed the scope as best as I could at the spot of sky where I felt Beta Tauri was located. I hit "enter" and selected Polaris as my second alignment star. To my relief, the scope slewed very, VERY close to where I thought Polaris should be, so I hit "enter" a second time. With my ersatz initialization complete, it was time to give it the acid test. I slewed the scope back over to the sun and set the tracking rate on Solar. To my relief, the sun stayed well-centered in the field for the duration of my observing session, about 20-25 minutes. My work-around is a success! I plan on playing with the mount in coming nights, weather permitting, with a small refractor, on some night-time objects, and see how many of the 42,900 objects in the database are actually within the grasp of a 50-80mm telescope ROTFL! Please, nobody tell Guy that I bought a GoTo mount. It IS for solar observing, primarily, but still... ;o)
The sky was bright and seeing poor, but I gave the little mount a workout, using my home-made 50mm f/9 spotting-scope refractor, at 16X & 28X. I aligned on Saturn, then Arcturus, then tweaked it by going back to Regulus. It then slewed to M3, which was nicely centered, then over to M51, then to M13. M13 wasn't dead-center, but still well within the FOV. A nice little mount. I plan on trying my compact 80mm f/5 refractor on it in coming nights, which only weighs a tad under 4 lbs. The 80mm ED is much too massive for it, unfortunately. On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 6:28 PM, Chuck Hards <chuck.hards@gmail.com> wrote:
I plan on playing with the mount in coming nights, weather permitting, with a small refractor, on some night-time objects, and see how many of the 42,900 objects in the database are actually within the grasp of a 50-80mm telescope ROTFL!
Chuck, Sounds like you are having too much fun. I live about 10mins closer to you now. When I get those roller bearings I will have to bring them over so I can check out your setup. Jim
10 minutes? You moved one freeway onramp closer? *;o)* I'm a little miffed because the tripod suffered a minor hardware failure. They use long, peened rivets instead of bolts for the articulated brace arms on the center post, and the peened flat on the end of one popped-off. The whole tripod leg could have slid-out and bashed the whole works to the concrete, but I noticed it in time. I could send the whole thing back, but I'm just going to replace ALL 3 of them with a #4 bolt and Nylock nut. On Sat, Jun 27, 2009 at 3:17 AM, jim Gibson <jimgibson0@gmail.com> wrote:
Chuck, Sounds like you are having too much fun. I live about 10mins closer to you now. When I get those roller bearings I will have to bring them over so I can check out your setup.
participants (3)
-
Canopus56 -
Chuck Hards -
jim Gibson