Observatorio de la Ballona

A problem with any astronomical set-up is the time it takes to get it right.

So here I am with what appears (to an unaided eye) to be good seeing and Saturn is up, but I don’t want to take apart the CCD set-up to use the Web Cam.

I faced the same thing a year ago when I took the refractor off of the mount and put the SCT back. It was months before I got the whole set-up working again. And the refractor set-up worked well. It was not suited to galaxy pictures, and Winter is the season of galaxies.

I got NGC 2903 on Saturday, Moon somewhat bright, seeing pretty good. The test image is nice. I’ll post it when it’s done.

Last night was clear — I planned and executed an imaging run.

I used CCDNavigator. The user interface caused me a fair amount of hearburn. It tries too hard to make the schedule work, so users who aren’t doing automated observing face edits that aren’t required for their use.

The software influenced my approach. A typical approach, emobodied in the software, is to use a stair step approach for taking your images. You start with the lower resolution color, and work up to the high resolution luminance. I have always evenly balanced my LRGB sub-images. I can’t say that I have a theory for doing so, and last night I accepted the approach indicated in the software. There is good reason to do so. When an object is lower in the sky, it is better to get low resolution data. I have not been binning my color, decided to tonight, so this was the approach.

So you take RGB away from the meridian crossing, and L just around it.

Overall it went well. Results will be posted later. However, a minor anomoly caused a problem. Normally I image with subimages taken L/R/G/B etc. With the RGB planned for early, I “grouped by slot”. and took shots RRRRRR/GGGGGG/BBBBB/LLLLLLL. The problem ocurred because the sky was too bright for the initial red exposures. They were all wasted. If I had done a patter of R/G/B/R/G/B…LLLLLL…R/G/B/R/G/B I would not have had the problem.

Live and learn.

I should have written about this two weeks ago.

When we finally got out to Aguanga after the last pipe failure, everything seemed fine. The new outside pipe was nicely insulated, the pump came on with no problem, everything OK. NOT. My wife came out of the house yelling to turn off the water because water was coming down through the ceiling in the bathroom. Water was quickly turned off, but the ceiling in the bathroom fell in moments later anyway.

Inspection in the attic revealed an inch-long burst in a 3/4 inch pipe that feeds a hose bib outside the house. Thankfully it must have burst after the outside pipe broke, and so did only leaked for the brief period we had the water on.

I headed to Anza to buy pipe clamps, and called the plumber. On the return from Anza (having purchased all three sizes of pipe clamps available) I noticed a truck ahead of me stopped at the side of the road within our community. I thought that it looked like plumber, and as I had not had a return call yet, I pulled up next to the truck to see if he could help. It was our plumber, who was dialing my number at that very moment.

Within the half hour the pipe was clamped, we had moved most of the damp insulation out, and were enjoying a cold beer. There is plywood over the whole in the bathroom ceiling, the heat is set at 50° so things won’t freeze, and we await final repairs. I sure hope this is the end of frozen pipes for a while.