Following the dissassembly of my mount, the cleaning and reassembly went surprisingly smoothly. I spent most of my time sanding and polishing the ring bearings and the mount where they mated. You can see from this image of the cleaned up bearing that there was some rubbing on the bearing which was probably causing some of the stickiness. I thought it might have been from the clutch, but if that slips, it’s just a little bit from handling the mount. That mark went around the entire ring. There was marking inside the mound barrel as well. I started with around […]
Mike Fratto
51 posts
I have been having issues with my mount balancing and tracking celestial objects. I am working on doing electronically assisted astronomy (EAA) and while I don’t need the precision and long term tracking that people doing astrophotography require, I do want to get a reliable series of exposures and maybe practice some AP before I decide to invest in a better mount. At the very least, I use a program called Sharpcap to run a series of shots while I sleep so I can see what I caught the next day and having reliable tracking is important. The video below […]
Join us at Maker Faire Syracuse. The event will be at the SRC Arena at OCC on April 2nd from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM. We will have a table and tent outside with some solar scopes and a raffle. There are a lot of Maker exhibitors such as Drone displays, Woodworkers of Central New York, blacksmithing demonstrations, engines and mechanical creations, robotics, and model airplanes. Lots of demonstrations.
If the sky is clear the morning of June 10th, 2021, we will be able to see a partial annular eclipse at sunrise. An annular eclipse occurs when the Moon is further from the Sun and instead of covering the Sun, it leaves a visible annular ring. In North America, we’d have to go to Canada to see the totality. Here in CNY, we can see a partial annular eclipse. Sunrise is 5:30 am and you will need a clear view of the horizon, which complicates matters. DHO is out because we don’t have a clear line of sight. Oneida […]