From: Milton Aupperle <milton@outcastsoft.com>

Date: January 17, 2006 8:57:32 PM MST

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: [Astro_IIDC] Re: Can't autoguide with Flea (or DSI Pro, for that matter).

Hi Tim;

LOL .. well don't go to far. I really need you for beta testing, especially if you go and get one of these "KITS and ASSEMBLED BOARDS" and want it to work with Astro IIDC. It should work fine as is, but one never knows for certain when they say "emulated". The SkySensor 2000 PC did things a little differently than a "true" LX200 scope behaves, but it's been worked through and now tracks really well.

Also I had the first really clear day in nearly a month, the 80 kmph winds howling all day have dropped down to almost nothing and I was just out trying to snag some shots of Cetus A M 77 (Mag 10.5 / 8.9 arc minute sized Galaxy) using the MAK 127 mm scope (focal reducer gives 550 mm focal lenght) with the Flea Fire Wire camera using the ActiveWire IsoOptical USB board on my "hacked" EQ3/2 mount and the 80mm aperture 800 mm focal length with a Unibrain mono camera as the Guider. Got it all wired up (both cameras attached to FireWire Hub, hub to Mac, ActiveWire USB box hooked to "hacked" EQ3/2 drive and Mac) , both scopes sighted in, RA drive / scope guider calibrated and then use the finder scope and star charts to find M77 general location (no GOTO scope here and faintest star you can see visually is Mag 3 from the 10th story apartment balcony). So I crank the camera up to 2 second exposures and find the surrounding 9th to 11th mag stars around M77 in the Field of view. Took a quick 60 second shot, saw the galaxy (faint fuzzy shape with bright center) and realized that that I forgot to put the !@##$%# LPR filter on and the light pollution is nearly wiping everything out.

So put the LPR filter on the Flea FW camera, point scope at Sirius, focus it and then repeat all the steps above. Then I get the guide scope adjusted so it's pointing at the 4.05 mag star 50 arc minutes away and get Astro IIDC tracking that. Take another 60 second shot, decide to run it up to 2 minutes but will do a dark frame shot first. So I turn around to put the cap on the scope for the dark frame, look up and see the !@#@#$@#$% clouds rolling in and I'm looking through a convenient hole which is just closing up.

And now I can take it all down and disconnect all the cables and hump it all inside before it starts snowing again.

What a lovely hobby we have..

LOL..

Milton J. Aupperle

President

ASC - Aupperle Services and Contracting

Mac Software (Drivers, Components and Application) Specialist

#1005 - 815 14th Avenue. S.W.

Calgary Alberta Canada T2R0N5

1-(403)-229-9456

milton@outcastsoft.com