Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Tidying up cables for the clear nights

Cameras in place
Showers were forecast today, but nothing happened rather than a windy day with big clouds and sun so it was a good day to work on the Astro-Shack.
I fit the new camera on the scope and got it all in place.  I finally did something I should have done years ago - put some tidy wrapping around the camera and other cables.  I found some wire wrapping stuff at Fry's and put that on.  Why? To make it look cool, and most of all, sometimes when slewing the telescope it will bog down and I'll look over and see that it's trying to strangle itself in it's own cables.  Ouch.
I left a large loop in the cable bundle now, so hopefully that problem is minimized.  Kind of clear tonight, but terribly twinkly from the winds, and drifting high clouds.  Just not very good.  So I wait again for a good night to try test run #2 of the camera and new cabling.
Tidy cable loop
In the left photo you can see the camera arrangement.  I have the Orion Starshoot auto-guide camera on the refractor, and the new Canon 60Da mounted on the LX200.  I would have tried a solar image today, but looking at the current sunspot data, there wasn't much there right now so I didn't try.
I also swapped out some speakers so I now have some great sounding Pandora streaming out there now too!


If nothing else, it looks pretty cool!

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