Objects

Session Notes

Variable Stars Photometric Monitoring - Variables - RX And, U And, TT Ari, S Cyg, SS Cyg, BL Lac, RU Peg, GK Per, V Sge, RR Tau Other Variable Star Attempts failed due to Autostar II failure. Astrometric Monitoring - Nearby Stars - HH And (Ross 248), Groombridge 34

- Evening session (2.4 hr). Cold,  ground fog at some stage, freezing ice on scope.  Autostar II failure 1.5 hrs into session, whereby LX200 scope wouldn't respond to programmed slew commands  (0.9 hrs of imaging data wasted).  Autostar screen blank or jumbled / text.   Autostar still not responding correctly after turning LX200 off /on a few times.  Slew buttons responding to presses ok, and the scope was finally 'roughly' parked (without the need to unlock the RA clutch).   Given the low temperature this was clearly a job that needed daylight hours to sort out (perhaps the Autostar firmware had become corrupted ?) Tried the scope the next day in daylight conditions. and found that the autostar contol box was again responding normally and the LX200 started up ok as it should (the previous night's problem is put down to either just a 'gremlin' or problem related to a combination of low temperature (-3 degC) and freezing fog ) Performed a rough sync and parked the scope. A few evenings later the scope was aligned on a star field and then correctly parked ready for session S406. - Session operated under semi-automated control - Ambient Temperature:  Initially -1.0 degC falling to -3.0 degC by end of session - CCD operation -25 degC (at 50% average cooling).   - main objective of the session was to acquire images of key selected stars for ongoing photometric and astrometric analysis.  -