Hi all!

Kind of a fun day today!

I brought 2 Quad Cities Astronomical Society club members out with me today to let them see the process, and ask for comments and insight… they were pretty impressed overall.  🙂

After confirming that the ATIK camera I was going to set up was monochrome, and not being sure of what filters are set up in the filter wheel… and deciding that training to image and use the filter wheel might not be the best way to start training… and that as cold as it is, EAA (Electronically Assisted Astronomy), where you use a camera to show a near live image on a computer monitor may be the best way to start… I set up the ZWO ASI290MC color camera on the scope.

I believe that the software for this camera may be easier to learn, and also may provide a bit more instant gratification… Ill need to see how well it works!

Next, I opened and ran all of the software from inside the observatory to make sure that there were no unforseen problems… all seemed well.

I found more Windows updates,so did those and then did a PC restart. Rather than re-log in, we went into the STEM room, logged into the instructors PC, figured out how VNC Viewer worked and remoted into the observatory PC… and started and ran all APPS… it all looked pretty good… and was xool to have it show up on all of the monitors hung on the class room walls!

It was really good to see first hand how one would monitor the opening and closing of the observatory when not being in the facility… a take away is that when you are in the observatory, you hear things running, but using remote access ya dont… so when ya click on something… be patient and watch the camera monitor!

So for the 2 kinda open concerns… keeping the focuser running and loosing driver connectivity when opening/closing the roof… i still need to mess with the focuser… but for the roof, MountWizard4 checked the log I sent, didnt find any issues, so made an update to their logging process and want me to updaye the app and send another log. I was kinda cold and it was getting late, so those 2 items will need to be dealt with during the day next week… I think both items have work arounds, so wont prohibit my doing modeling and a polar alignment, then training… then the Grand Opening (weather pending) on January 8th.

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Clear Skies!
Jeff