20140324 Jupiter

I have a brief look at Jupiter with my Ranger tonight.  My GOTO Mark-X is not useable due to the poor viewing angle, my 410 head did it marginally. 

Finding it with my 20mm widescan at 3+ degree field of view is easy, and then I zoomed in using my 4mm at 120x, quite a nice view despite the cloud around.

Imaging is rather impossible, unless with an iOptron Cube like mount which I owned before, but the aperture and quality are both very limited.

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I watched the dealer's page and Meade supply seems resumed, and then I send him an email, my new solar filter will probably be ready earlier next month!  Longing for that, need to make an adapter for my Ranger first, and also get a JMI NGF again!

20140324 Sun and the testing of the motorized DEC

Cloud floating around, it's virtually impossible to image.  Got the follow as a test of the motorized DEC, 1602 (GMT+8):-

Backlash is obvious but it is still perfectly useable given you had a bit patience.  The DEC motor is driven by a 9V (7.4V actual) battery, the speed is about right.  I will make a better hand controller for it.

Motorizing the DEC slow motion control

This is a video of the first integration test by using a rather soft metal plate to fix the motor in place.

I've used it with a telescope this morning at different voltage level. The view through the eyepiece shows that, at 12V DC input, the slewing was responsive and no backlash could be observed at 24x but the slewing speed could be a bit too fast. By going down to 7.4V, backlash is more observable but still very acceptable, the slewing was far slower for fine tuning. In fact, it could be even slower at higher magnifications. I guess I will settle down with a 9V (actually a 7.4V Lithium battery in the form of 9V 6F22. Therefore, I shall get a box which allows me to mount two buttons plus the 9V battery inside, maybe a small variable resistor.