First Run of the New SolarQuest Mount
The temperature this morning was still only in the upper 30s (it is early March, after all) but I was comfortable in just a fleece sweatshirt. Being comfortable helps. Well... I wasn't completely comfortable... I'm still experiencing significant spinal pain and I'm still having difficulty putting weight on my right leg without my knee buckling underneath me. I was more comfortable than I have been lately though so that helped.
I set up the new SolarQuest mount in the backyard in the same area where we'll be observing the eclipse next month. I could have used a small table too but I didn't feel like digging one out. Our lawn furniture is still stored away for the winter. This area of the yard is where we have our putting green and it is a nice area for setting up telescopes too.
The primary thing I wanted to test this morning was the new SolarQuest mount that arrived earlier in the week. I needed to make sure it works the way it is supposed to work.
I recorded video of me powering on the mount for the first time and letting it do its thing. Within about a minute, this new mount connected to GPS satellites and started tracking on its own. It worked perfectly which makes things so much easier!
The only thing I need to do is to level the mount before turning on the mount. After leveling the mount, I simply press the power button. The mount will automatically level the telescope to 0° and then search for GPS satellites. It connects to the satellites and then it slews the telescope upward to the current altitude of the sun for my specific GPS coordinates and elevation. Then the mount slews the telescope clockwise until it sees the sun in its little sensor. At this point, the mount will continue to track the sun for as long as I have it connected to power.
The mount found satellites within less than a minute. The video at the bottom of this page is in real time so you can see just how quickly at attains satellite signals. I have to say that I am very impressed with this little lightweight mount.
I observed the sun for a while before inserting a camera into the diagonal to attempt to record some video. I immediately realized that I couldn't get the camera to come to focus. The diagonal was taking up too much length of the optical light path.
I removed the diagonal and inserted a medium length extension tube which allowed me to come to focus. Unfortunately, with the camera in this orientation (pointed upward straight through the telescope with the back of the camera pointed toward the ground), I could no longer use my wired remote shutter release because now the LCD screen was blocking the I/O ports on the camera. Since I could not see the back of the camera, I had to swing my LCD screen out so I could tilt it upward allowing me to see what was on the screen. With the LCD screen in this position, I have no access to the ports on the camera. This was a problem I needed to resolve.
A little while later, I remembered that I have a diagonal that has a shorter optical length... my Baader Prism Diagonal... so I dug that out to give it a try. Now my camera was able to come to focus and I was able to plug in my wired remote release too. With the camera inserted into the diagonal, the rear LCD is now pointed upward toward my face so I can easily see the LCD screen in this position. This will work for the eclipse!
I also wanted to test a couple of cameras especially one particular camera I plan to use for video of the eclipse through a telescope. I tested a few different camera settings while recording video. I'm still not sure what to do with my video settings for the very fast moving eclipse though. I had all the time in the world this morning to set up the right settings but things will be very different during the eclipse. The main thing is the brightness will be completely different with the moon blocking the sun. It will be quite dark. I might have to resort to using mostly automatic settings and just hope that the camera chooses settings well.
While the camera is recording video, I'll be using a different camera to shoot still images of the eclipse. I really want to capture images of the large, spectacular corona showing plasma gases flowing along magnetic lines during totality so that is my priority. Getting some video footage of the eclipse would be a nice addition though.
After capturing a sample video clip (shown at the bottom of this page), I also shot a single image of the sun (directly below). Usually, for the best images, I would stack at least ten images but I only shot one single image this time around. It still came out nicely and certainly well enough for the eclipse.
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