I set out to reassemble the deck’s tall water feature for the birds today. I also wanted to get my astrographs mounted. The water feature took a couple of hours to reassemble – much of the time spent recovering from the efforts related to carting heavy items from where they had been temporarily stored to the water feature’s site. The reassembly went fairly smoothly. The final result looked like this:
I expect painters to come tomorrow to recoat the railings you see behind the water feature and all around the deck.
The next big chore was to figure out how to remount the astrographs in the observatory. In the past, Susan has helped me since the instruments are bulky and heavy. Susan, still convalescing, was not available. I had to think about the problem more creatively, and I finally found a one-person solution. Below is the reassembled instrument assembly. The little scope at the top is a guide scope. Below it is the Stellarvue 130mm f/5 APO, wide-field astrograph, and at the bottom is the GSO 10″ f/8 Ritchey-Cretien astrograph. Each astrograph has a dedicated DSLR – an APS-C format Canon 7D Mark II for the narrow-field 10″ RC and full-frame Cannon 6D Mark II for the 130mm wide-field APO.
The new imaging array needs another counterweight to balance the assembly properly; the mount already has 2-10kg counterweights, and I ordered another 10kg weight today. There are also more wires and cables to install for the electronic focuser and the two cameras. The mount already has rough polar alignment, but I need the new counterweight in order to refine the polar alignment and get everything properly balanced. Nothing is ever as simple as we imagine it will be. Sigh.
On an upbeat note, I’ve seen the vixen every day the last few days. She has a partner now. They come and go to their den beneath front deck – in the wee hours and in the evenings as well. As I worked inside the dome this afternoon, the vixen sauntered across the backyard and into the hobby greenhouse whose door was open.
Below, she appears curled up on the greenhouse’s warm brick floor. I guess she realized that I needed supervision.
