The Atik 16ic arrived this morning, that was quick! I’ve powered it up to make sure it works but I’m under strict instructions not to use it until Christmas.

It was cloudy earlier but has cleared a little so I’ve set the scope up in the hope that I can get a few hours imaging in tonight. I thought the Crescent nebula shots from the other night were better than expected considering 15 second subs, so I’ll be increasing the exposure and hoping for a recognisable mosaic.  I still struggle with anything longer than about 30 seconds but I’ll be autoguiding within 2 weeks, that should sort out my long exposures.

On the subject of autoguiding I’ll be using my SC1 SPC900NC and as posted previously will see if I can use the 60mm refracter I have, failing that I’ve seen some promising results with 50mm finders so I may go down this route.

I’ve just had a  quick look at the remote screen and it seems to be clouding over again .. back soon.

00:04 – It did clear but I stayed with the Crescent to see if I could add pieces to the mosaic I’ve been building, but there’s too much high cloud and the nebula was barely visible. About 20 minutes ago I tried to slew the scope around to the North, suffered a meridian flip and lost my alignment. A trip out to the scope gave me another idea. There in the South was Orion the Hunter clear of my neighbours roof and begging to be imaged. I quickly realigned the scope and started it taking 15 second subs. Here’s the result of 46 of those frames stacked in Registax:

I’ve just had the DEC assembly off the EQ-6 following instructions on James Robert Cook’s site. This is where I found the instructions for the RA axis when I regreased that so I was happy to return here for help.

I packed the tapered bearing with grease and regreased the worm. Putting everything back together had me concerned when the bearing near the head of the mount refused to go back into its seat. I eventually tapped it home, very gently, with a small hammer and a rag. My concern was that the casting would crack but I couldn’t see why the bearing would come out so easily then fail to go back in. I know you need to have everything square as it’s a tight fit but like I say, a bit of a scary moment there.

All fitted back together nicely and adjusted the mesh with the power on so that I could make sure everything turned. Adjusting the mesh control grub screws allowed me to take the slack out of the axis and now I’m ready for the next clear night.

After adjusting the RA axis I had a few re-adjustment sessions before I was happy with the mesh, I think I learned from that but I’m still prepared for some fine tuning with the mount under load. A wise man would tell you to take the electronics out, remove the stepper motors and test the mesh with your finger but I like to familliarize myself with the mount a little at a time and had no intention of stripping the whole thing down.

Start to finish was no more than 1 hour, but I didn’t chemically degreased the gears or remove the smaller bearings, I was only interested in making sure there was little or no play in the axis, others will go further and suggest replacing the bearings, but I’m hoping that’s not required at the moment.

Job Done

I’ve been a little concerned about the play in my RA axis since taking it apart and have just found this article which seems to give me the solution: http://timsastroblog.blogspot.com/2007/04/little-tune-up-for-eq6.html

It seems I would have got there in the end as I’d narrowed the error down to adjustments of the worm screws but it’s nice to see the problem documented this way, well done Tim.