Observing Session - Velcro Maneuver

Time/Date

20230418T1900-2330

People

OBS: Onkar, Tara

Viewers: "tieria", meyer

Spaces Occupied

401, 433C, dome

Goals

1. Test GuideDream thingy
2. Take color pictures of venus and/or other pretti stellar objects
3. get r and b filter photos of venus using mono camera and filter wheel for meyer
4. insert more here

Log

1. opening/setup
   1. opened dome at 7pm
   2. commenced velcro maneuver
      1. i velcro'd the mirror doors open, will have to undo when closing up
   3. uinstalled uv filter from filter wheel and stored in safe place
   4. installed filter wheel and color camera on-axis, connected both to icron extender
2. slewed to mars
   1. donut???
   2. 
   3. not sure what thats ab but whatever
   4. set object position
   5. set tracking rates to 15.042
   6. installed guideDreamST4
      1. recognized on sharpcap, can move up down and left but not right
      2. when slewing right: 
      3. 
      4. probably forgot to install a driver or something, ill do it later
   7. messing with color camera settings and focus to get less donut and more mars
      1. donut death at focus value 2170
      2. changed color space from rgb24 to raw16
   8. not convinced this is mars, going to slew somewhere brighter to set object position better
3. slewed to venus
   1. set object position
   2. wow.gg shes so blurry
   3. took 25 fits, pngs and sers
4. back to mars
   1. 
   2. yeah not great
   3. 
   4. focus at 2160
5. dinner
   1. we have two options (probably more but im listing two)
      1. option a: fix focus by looking at bright boi star
      2. option b: install drivers for DreamGuideST4 and attempt autoguiding via PHD2
   2. prob going to go with both as im bored and have time (currently 9:14PM)
   3. brb getting food at subby way B)))))))))
6. autoguiding (AG) using DreamGuideST4 (DG)
   1. plugged in USB side of DG to free USB port on data computer
   2. plugged in st4-to-ag cable to ag port of MDC and st4 end to DG
   3. installed winRAR to install drivers for DreamGuideST4
      1. success, lights lit up on DG
   4. attempted AG on various stars but they all had issues such as being too bright, low mass or mass changing
   5. tara and I found hd112887, attempted autoguiding using spotter scope
      1. SUCCESS, followed this tutorial
      3. what we did
         1. restarted PHD2 like 7 billion times
         2. set ZWO ASI2600MM as camera
         3. set GuideDreamST4 as mount
         4. clicked on pixel of star
         5. set exposure to 3 seconds
         6. began looping, let it calibrate
         7. visually looked at DreamGuide to see where it was slewing the scope with its respective LEDS and with on-axis camera feed
7. closing up
   1. onkar undid velcro tie downs to bring mirror doors to a close
   2. confirmed dome shutter closure
   3. tara uninstalled filter wheel and color camera from on axis
   4. brought down all camera, filters and velcro box
   5. reinstalled UV filter in filter wheel
   6. turned off all programs and remote power strip
   7. switched off all MDC switches

ToDo

1. recreate successful AG attempt on other stars
2. install mirror door parts whenever they arrive
3. work w meyer and roy to see if data collected from ag is any good or not

Notes

1. not great seeing
2. color camera is not good for ag, do not use in the future
3. need to look into proper set up of ascom st4 interfacing in sharpcap for the DG
4. need to setup phd2 server to talk to sharpcap

Weather

All sites are reporting no cloud coverage with high transparency; however, we are getting bad seeing according to ClearDarkSky and poor seeing as per Astrospheric.

Data

Normal place, synced to Google Drive