Namid Observatory - Day 5

First, we had to wait for the scope to come back. At noon I drove over with Michael and Diana to what could only be described as a scene from MadMax:

But the most important part was that Rory had the mount cut, welded and ready:

Drove back - and then we had to put everything back up. Instead of 3 days it took us only 3 hours this time:

And with that, we were back where we left off. Plus we got the FedEx package from Manoj to finish everything.

• Connected the ASI camera - it also needed a powered USB connection.
• Connected the MGPBox to the mount and routed the cable through the pier.

Night was clear, so we could continue:

• focused the ASI camera and locked down the Starbase focuser.
• Final polar alignment:
1. Ran a model using the ASI camera: 30+' off (not too bad!)
2. Polar aligned with the ASI camera
3. Ran another model using the ASI camera: 5'
4. Polar aligned with the FLI camera to get a better resolution
5. Ran another model, now using the FLI camera: 6' !!!
   How could we have worsened the polar alignment?
   Well, by doing the model with the guide scope/camera and the alignment with the main scope/camera. And they are obviously not aligned...
6. Now, we polar aligned with the FLI camera
7. Ran another model (with the FLI camera): <10" - yei!!!
   We decided that that is good enough and carefully tightened the Azimuth and Altitude Lock screws.

Next, we wanted to check collimation. We used CCDInspector and it measured:
Tilt in X: +0.2"
Tilt in Y: +0.3"
Collimation: 1.0"

Awesome! This would safe us from doing collimation - yei!!!

Before we went to bed, we started another full model run to measure our final polar alignment: 1' 30" !!! Ran another model - with same results.

Turns out that locking down the Azimuth and Altitude screws changed it quite a lot. So, we will have to do the final polar alignment again...

Next: Day 6