Tag Archives: ra

Confirmed, the new RA worm is working well

Finally another clear night presented itself last night, and I replicated my testing of PE with the new RA worm block in place.

I tried data gathering with longer exposures, but didn’t like what it was telling me, then realized I was on the wrong track anyway; I should keep my data gathering to short exposures and let the fact that I am averaging the PE over multiple worm cycles handle smoothing out the seeing. This is consistent with all the advice in the Bisque support forum too. So I increased to gathering more worm cycles – 7 cycles.

Uncorrected, the worm is averaging out at 1.2 arcseconds peak-to-peak, and even looking at the raw data, the worst case swing is 2.9 arcseconds. That difference shows the seeing jitter. This is really good performance – the guaranteed spec from Bisque is 7 arcseconds, so the worm is ‘way outperforming that, and is below seeing.

Then another 7 cycles with PEC turned on:0.4 arcseconds peak-to-peak residual error with correction running (averaged out over the 7 worm cycles), with max including big seeing spikes of 2 arcseconds.

Wow.

I tried a quick image with guiding turned on. I’ve lost the guider log, but with 3-second guide exposures and light aggressiveness (40%) it was holding the image to under 1/2 pixel. The resulting image in this 5-minute exposure has nice round stars:

This seems to be avoiding an obvious question: what does an unguided image of some substantial length look like? I didn’t see the point of doing that test yet, since unguided imaging is substantially enhanced by ProTack, which I haven’t configured yet.

Next clear night (several days away) i’ll do a small TPoint run to re-check polar alignment, then a large TPoint run to build a good model, then do some experiments with PEC, TPoint, and ProTrack all turned on, to see how long unguided exposures can be.

These TPoint runs will be much easier, and more accurate, now that I have installed the SkyShed’s PZT so I can roll the roof right out of the way. Previous TPoint runs involved having to chase the scope around the sky with roof rotation – both inconvenient, and also likely introducing vibration.

New RA gear: looking good

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The new RA worm block is installed, and I had time for a brief test. Testing was cut short because of a sudden cloud-over, but looked pretty good. Next clear night I have a bit more testing to do.

Recall that I was unable, with all previous adjustments, to get uncorrected Periodic Error consistently below about 7.5 arcseconds peak-peak. For example:

With the new worm block in place, here is a first uncorrected PE data collection:

This is incredible – 1.5 arcseconds peak-peak, with no correction being applied. More in a moment on why the curve is so jagged, but this is certainly great performance.

Then I loaded the above as a correction curve, and did another data collection with PEC turned on:

1 arcsecond, peak-to-peak. The wild fluctuation that is just visible on the right edge of the graph is when the guide star was lost when the clouds suddenly moved in. I deleted those data points to get this graph – but I guess I missed one.

Both of these – uncorrected and corrected – are, in fact, error smaller than the seeing fluctuation I have on a typical night. I think that’s why the curves are jagged – that’s seeing bouncing around.

I was going to test this theory, when it suddenly clouded over. So next clear night, I’ll do another set of runs (uncorrected and corrected) but with guiding exposures of 3 or 4 seconds. The long exposures should “smear” seeing jitters out and, if I’m right about the effect of seeing, should produce smoother curves. I’m looking forward to testing this.

I’d also like to do another data run just to convince myself that this isn’t “too good to be true”. Did I do something wrong that resulted in this excellent performance? I don’t think so, but I’d like to replicate. Adding guiding to a PE of 1 arcsecond should produce a very stable image. In fact, I’m interested in seeing how long an exposure I can use unguided – that would certainly be convenient.

Standby for another clear night. Looking out the window, that’s not tonight.

Cleaned and re-greased RA worm block

I used the same procedure again to remove, clean, and re-grease the Right Ascension worm block. Some photos:

: The RA worm block cover, remove 4 corner screws to remove.

: RA worm block cover coming off

: RA worm block. Cover the cable hole with tape or paper to avoid losing screws in the mount housing.

: Removing the RA worm block

: RA main drive gear, with old grease

: RA main drive gear, grease cleaned out with toothbrush and cloth

: RA worm gear, grease cleaned out with toothbrush and cloth

: Molykote 33 grease, rated for very low temperaturs.

: Grease evenly applied to main drive gear, filling teeth

: With worm block reinstalled, remove rubber cap and adjust cam stop and spring plungers

I then ran the mount through several iterations of exercise, and all seems well. Even motion, no stalls, no weird noises.

Finally I did the manual mechanical check for hysteresis on both worm blocks, and no motion detected in either case. I think I’m ready to start polar alignment – just need the couple of days of forecast thunderstorms to pass.