Fiasco

Yesterday, in an attempt to bring the sweet spot back to the center (as noted in the previous post about flats etc.), I tried recollimating the Hyperstar. After an hour or so of frustration, and lost collimation etc. I realized that the threads of the hyperstar had stuck to Hyperstar conversion kit in the corrector plate. I guess this was because of my attempts to get a better angle for the collimation screws on the Hyperstar. The collimation screws on the Hyperstar really need to be more accessible. They are hard to reach, especially when using a camera such as the QHY8 which has a profile which covers the screws from the top. Anyways, this whole thing meant that I now had to remove the whole corrector plate and rescrew the baffle tube to the conversion kit ring. What a hassle! But the silver lining is that since I had the corrector out anyways, I ended up cleaning it pretty good. One other thing that was stuck was the nose piece of the QHY8. I guess I lost whatever seal it was providing to the CCD. Now I will have to see if frosting problems will rear their ugly head. Finally as of tonight, I am back to my old IDAS-LPS-P2. And the Hyperstar seems collimated and I think I have the corrector centered properly. So the sweet spot should be back in the center. To collimate I started with the hyperstar completely flat and I need very little effort to bring it to collimation. One other thing that I ended up fixing in the process is the way the Robofocus was attached to the scope. I was using 3M mounting tape, which was rated for 2 pounds. I went to Home Depot and got Scotch mounting tape rated at 5 pounds and the robofocus seems to be a lot more stable now.

As I type this I imaging IC1848 (Soul Nebula). Hopefully it will turn out good enough to post. We will see...