Helena Observatory (re)build

[StarHugger]

Nice, best of luck with the new digs and looking forward to some Images!

[KathyNS]

A tip I learned from my eclectrician when he was pulling my power cable through 150' of conduit: He used only string and a vacuum cleaner (shop vac) to pull the string all the way throught the 150' of conduit. I was amazed at how well and how quickly that worked. He just used light cotton string attached to the power cable.

Yes. That is how I pulled the power cable for the building.

[Graeme1858]

Some minor progress yesterday and today. I pulled DC power and data cables through their respective conduits to the mount. I still have some re-connection to do: I had to cut the RS-232 cable to remove it prior to the move, so now I have to splice it back together.

Tips for pulling multiple cables through one conduit:
- Make sure it is a big conduit, especially if some of the cables are USB.
- Pull cables one at a time.
- Don't try to pull cable with a fish wire. Use the fish wire to pull a string.
- Attach each cable in turn to the string, then pull it plus another string through the conduit.
- Pull cables in decreasing order of plug size. USB before RJ45. Naked cables last.
- Leave the last string in the conduit for future use.

With all the tying of string, I had to work gloveless. It was cold. Note to self: use a heater next time!

Cables are never pulled sequentially into a conduit due to the risk of friction burns causing damage to the cables. The cable drums are put on a rack, or a length of conduit, or a broom handle and all fed into the conduit in one go with one person feeding them in and one person pulling on the draw string.

Graeme

[KathyNS]

Cables are never pulled sequentially into a conduit due to the risk of friction burns causing damage to the cables. The cable drums are put on a rack, or a length of conduit, or a broom handle and all fed into the conduit in one go with one person feeding them in and one person pulling on the draw string.

That would have been my preference. But it wasn't going to work due to the USB and RJ45 plugs on the ends of the cables. There was no way to bundle the plugs in a way that wouldn't jam in the bends in the conduit.

[KathyNS]

It has been a long, cold, cloudy winter. But I have finally been able to do some work on the observatory. I still need better weather to work on the dome movement, but I now have a working all-sky camera. And last night, we actually had a clear sky, so I was able to grab some frames for calibration. So, here is a first light image from the Helena Observatory:

Close pixel-peepers will notice that the compass points and elevation circles are not accurate. They were a best guess, based on some crude measurements of the installation. However, the star 52UMa cooperated by crossing close to the zenith during the run, so today I was able to calibrate the image overlay. The next set of images, next clear night, will be more accurately marked.

[Gordon]

How many months has it been since you've had clear sky?

[KathyNS]

Now that the eclipse is over (It was amazing!), I have been back to work on the observatory. I found out where the problem was in the rotation: screw heads binding on one of my passive hold-down brackets. That is now fixed, and the dome is rotating freely. Today, I got my imaging scope mounted and the various bits wired up. The next thing will be a full daylight functional test, followed by a polar alignment.

I also did some work on my security cameras. The prime objective was not astronomy-related. There is a stray cat we are trying to trap so we can get him neutered. Monitoring his habits so we can trap him means having a camera able to sense and record movement even at night. I have been beating on the software for days trying to get it to work. (The new software is crap. I reverted back to the old program and it works much better.) In the process, I made sure that my observatory cams were working properly. Here are a couple of shots inside, showing the newly-mounted scope. (Kinda hard to see the black scope against the black dome, but you get the idea.)

[Gordon]

That’s a great setup Kathy!

[Graeme1858]

Looking good Kathy.

Glad you got the software problems sorted out. Now you just have to do the same with the cat!

Will it be long before you're operational?

Graeme

[KathyNS]

Will it be long before you're operational?

I sure hope not! This move has taken way too long to complete, and the honey-do list is still long. I have been out of action for nearly a year, and that is way too long for my sanity.

[Graeme1858]

Are you still using the WalkerDome ASCOM driver? I spent a lot of time studying that code when I was putting my observatory together. It's impressive!

Perhaps subcontract out some of the honey-dos?

Graeme

[KathyNS]

A major milestone tonight: the first polar alignment on the new pier. It is too cloudy to do anything serious, but there was a convenient sucker hole right around Polaris.

[KathyNS]

The imaging Newtonian is collimated, and all the wires are connected, and the sky was clearish, so I thought I'd take it out for a spin. The best-laid plans, and all that...

As part of this move and rebuild, I installed a new computer, so of course, all my software had to be re-installed. My legacy version (3.1) of SGP, which runs fine on the old computer, installed okay on the new one, but now it pops up license nagware. There is probably a license key somewhere, but of course, they aren't going to tell me where it is, so they will force me to upgrade to the subscription version.

I had come to terms with this a while back, and was all set to use NINA instead, but its user interface is pretty strange in comparison. As a result, I revisited the SGP saga, and confirmed that it was going to be unusable. So, back to NINA.

I think I almost had a working test sequence set up. But it surprised me by having no knowledge of the time of day. Apparently, for that, I have to use the "Advanced" sequencer. It took me a while, but I found it. Now I have to set it up.

<rant>
One thing that bugs the heck out of me is that software developers don't supply any documentation any more. User interfaces are no longer "user-friendly". Remember when that was a thing? It should be a thing again. The only instructions available come from absolutely dreadful customer-produced YouTube "tutorials". I **HATE** customer-generated video tutorials. I hate having to sit through 30 seconds of their theme music at the beginning, I hate seeing their ugly mug in an insert in the corner of the screen. But since there is no other source of introduction to NINA's (in this case) user interface and no other way to find out what goes where, I'm going to have to sit through two or three of these to figure it out. Aaargh!!
</rant>

Oh, and along the way, I found that the drivers for my guide camera (QHY5) are only available on the Wayback Machine web archive. At least they are available. I just downloaded them and ... amazingly ... they work. Phew. For a while last night, I thought I'd have to forego guiding. (That is the second time the Wayback Machine has saved my butt. The first was about 18 years ago when I accidentally deleted a customer's website. Oops! )

[Graeme1858]

Great to see you're nearly there Kathy.

.... and was all set to use NINA instead

Excellent! NINA is brilliant! Whatever you want it to do, it can probably do it!

Here's the manual:

https://nighttime-imaging.eu/docs/master/site/

Graeme

[KathyNS]

Here's the manual:

https://nighttime-imaging.eu/docs/master/site/

Graeme

Thanks for that link, Graeme. The manual is less clear than it ought to be, but is a vast improvement over the videos. (But why did they use the least readable colour scheme for the example screen grabs? Argh!)