I arrived at Binbrook A to find Kerry, Tim, and Joe, several scopes, binoculars and computers all set up and ready to image. Unfortunately Kerry neglected to bring an important fitting and could not really image properly, so she decided to do some real time observing instead. The sun was just setting and it took a few minutes before Polaris could be seen.

I had my car fully packed with an EQ platform, and the GWS. I built a jig in the back seat so that the entire scope can now ride in the back leaving room for a passenger (or a tent) in the front, except for the EQ platform not quite fitting back there with the rest of it yet. (I plan to make some kind of wooden contraption to make it more compatible with the seat cushions)

Turns out for lack of a crescent wrench (the moon was near full, too) i could not test out my eq platform this time, but i did manage to unwrap it, power it up and align it and it did its job well, making almost no sound and moving ever so gradually. 4 knobs adjust the placement. I think the key is to use 3 of them to level and bring in the fourth for stability after it’s level.

It’s designed for 43 degrees north, which is about right on for Binbrook, so almost no shimming was needed. (I see that starfest is at about 44 degrees north). Alignment of the LB16 took only a few minutes, but i think some big knobs on the secondary adjustment screws would make things easier still. I also think i need to shim my laser aligner to get it perfectly centered. Another cool addition would be a right-angle finderscope. My red dot finder is great if i can see or estimate what i am aiming at, but not so good when there’s light pollution making it hard to spot the fainter stars. Another option is to attach the laser to my binoculars, and use it to point the way for the GWS to follow.

Mike, Tim and Therese arrived presently and mike provided us with some fine advice. He also helped me fish up M71 and M27. Alas the camera holder eludes me once again and i did not get a chance to see my pocket camera sneak photos through the eyepiece yet. With averted vision some of the stars in M71 could be detected. I set up by Bino parallelogram and suffered a hockey-tape malfunction but it still served its purpose for Kerry’s new binoculars. I tried some high power views using a 7.5 mm eyepiece to bring in Alcor and Mizar. They don’t even fit in the same field of view, but the scope split the double nicely. The double-double was not split under 26 mm, and when i tried the higher power, the clouds were rolling in and i could not fish it up.

The clouds rolled in for good by 11:30 and i was packed up and ready to leave by midnight. I think tomorrow i will try the dark skies where i did my messier marathon, near Lynden.