A lot has happened but,I am still here

Hi all,just wanted to let everyone know that i am still here and contributing to the blog.A lot has happened in my absence.Some personal and some not.I have acquired a dome observatory from my good friend Michael and I am making full use of it.

Aside from a few cosmetic repairs, it is suiting me very well.I also made a few new purchases including a shiny new Losmandy G11 mount with Gemini 2.This mount is a gorilla of sorts and carries my 10"Meade sn reflector and Meade Ds90 without problem.I also acquired a Orion imager and autoguider,I haven't had a chance to test out the autoguider yet.Lol...I am still in a big learning curve with the new mount.It is a lot different from my Meade LXD75 which wasn't up to snuff with astrophotography.



Here is my new mount (I haven't quite figured it all out yet)



It took quite a bit of work getting the site prepared for the observatory.I had a lot of digging to do,not only for the concrete pad but,also the trench I needed to run electricity.Hard work pays off and I even have internet which gave my old desktop Pc a new lease on life.

Like I said,the new mount is VERY different from my Meade LXD75 and isn't exactly a plug and play mount.Criminy,I have about 50lbs of counter weights lol!.The LXD75 is pretty much cast aluminum and the G11 is welded steel.One thing I am not so sure I like about the G11 G2 is the HC.It is has a touch screen display which seems kind of jittery at times.The goto's seem to be quite accurate and the tracking is great.I was able to get 35-40 seconds of tracking from the LXD75 before I got star trails.The new mount is good (so far) for up to 2 and a half minutes before I begin to see star trailing.Keep in mind folks,I haven't got the mount tweaked yet and am VERY confident that I can get 5-8 min of good tracking.Plus,once the auto guider is up and running smoothly,my tracking will become almost unlimited.



Uranus



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