Last Day of Imaging with Old Mount

As I mentioned in a previous blog entry, last Saturday was my last day of imaging with what was, at the time, my best telescope mount (see photo, at right).  At the time, it seemed like the electronics were toast so that put an end to this last imaging session within a short few minutes.  Then I spent the next few hours trying to figure out exactly what was wrong with this mount.

Even after a few days, I still had not fixed the mount because I still had no idea what could be wrong other than perhaps a piece of obsolete and no-longer-available electronics failed so I ordered a new mount.  The mount I ordered was the newer and significantly improved version of this older mount.  The advantage of purchasing the same (but improved) mount is that I wouldn't need to purchase any other associated accessories because this new mount would fit everything I already own.  It would fit every tripod, it would fit my telescope pier with no adapting necessary, and all my associated accessories would work with this mount right away with no need for additional purchases. 

While I was waiting for the new mount to arrive, I continued trying to troubleshoot the problem with my old mount.  It was nagging at me.  It actually kept me up at night (I have slept very little this week).  I set it up in Sheila's home office to work on it and test it because Sheila was working in her work office this week.  As luck would have it, the mount was operating just fine now.  "Hmmm...  what the..."

I had already narrowed the possible problem down to two possibilities.  First, an electronic part within the handset might have failed.  Or, I had a part fail inside one of the mount's axes.  

Inside each axis is a wheel that turns when the axis turns.  The wheel has slotted holes all around the circumference of the wheel.  An emitter shines light through these slots from one side of the wheel toward a receiver on the other side.  As the wheel turns, the light flashes like an old-time movie due to the spinning slots on the wheel.  The receiver sends that information back to the handset so that the mount always knows the orientation of each axis by counting these flashes of light.  If an emitter or receiver fails or is dirty, the mount will run wild like I had been experiencing.  Unfortunately, I needed to order some additional tools to gain access to the emitters and receivers so I was waiting on tools to arrive so I can check those parts.

In the meantime, I decided to set up the mount and run more tests.  I thought that maybe some other issue might become obvious with more testing.  

As luck would have it, the mount was now working just fine.  Over and over, the mount performed as it should.  So, what was the problem?  Electronics either work or they fail and don't work.  I was now realizing that perhaps the electronics are just fine.  

It then dawned on me that the only times I experienced the wild runaway problems with the mount was when I was doing solar astronomy out in the bright sun.  What if sun leaked in through the motor housings causing the receiver to not be able to "see" the light from the emitter?  Hmmm...  that could cause the problems I was having. 

Then I remembered that at a certain time of day, the sun reflects off the shiny metal roof over our outdoor kitchen and shines toward where I had been setting up my telescope for solar astronomy.  When the sun hits that roof it is blindingly bright if you are in the wrong spot at the right time!  I was then remembering that when I was experiencing the problems with this old mount it was whenever the sun is reflecting off of that roof.  When I was troubleshooting the mount on this last day of imaging, whenever I looked toward that part of the yard, I was getting blinded by sun reflecting off the roof.  This could have been my problem!

I'm still waiting on the tools I ordered to arrive so I can open the motor housings on this old mount.  I still plan to open it up so I can be more certain of what is wrong with this mount but I am leaning heavily toward there being a light leak in one of the motor housings that is negatively affecting the emitter and receiver.  Light should render the emitter-receiver function useless.  I'll need to do more digging into this but I think I solved the issue and it is a very unusual and odd cause.  It is something I have never heard of before now!

Yesterday, my new mount arrived.  It arrived within less than 72 hours of ordering it so I can't complain about that!  I helped the UPS guy carry the heavy box to the front door.  After a brief conversation about what was in this big heavy box, he was on his way and I was opening the box like a kid on Christmas morning.  

Since I am already very familiar with this particular mount, assembly was a piece of cake.  I had the mount up and running within minutes.  This new mount has better bearings, better motors, better electronics, and is controlled wirelessly by either one of my tablets or a computer.  The app that controls the mount is a joy to use with bright colorful images of possible objects to view as well as information about each object.  I already had this app installed on my tablets because I use it for controlling my smaller telescope mount.  So, I was even already familiar with the app too.  This made it a very fast and easy task to get up and running with my new mount.

Since this new mount has better motors controlling each axis, it is so smooth...  silky smooth...  when it slews to an object in the sky.  It is quieter than the old mount too which is a welcome relief.  It really is a joy to use.  My old mount was annoyingly loud and sounded a bit like a coffee grinder.  This new mount whirs to life smoothly, almost soothingly by comparison.

So, back to my last day of imaging with the old mount.  After posting some solar images here in the blog a few days ago, I continued working on creating my own process for processing all this data I collect.  I refined my technique and now I am getting far better results.  

I went on and on in that other blog entry about how the atmospheric conditions were horrendous so my useable data was scant to say the least.  Yet, after improving my technique over the past few days, I managed to produce far more detailed images using my new techniques in post-processing the data from last weekend...

Here is the false color version of the same photo...

Once I ordered the new mount, my plan for the old mount has been to convert it to a manual mount...  no motors, no GoTo, no electronics at all, just slow motion knobs to manually control each axis.  Now that I think it might be functioning just fine, I know I am going to have a difficult time converting it to a manual mount.  I really could use a heavy-duty manual mount though...