This not-fully-autonomous or remote Celestron rig is difficult to manage in 115-deg. heat and will be put on hold as a new system will be introduced. |
Massive Telescope Challenges
The Typhoon has passed the Pacific Ocean and moved into China where its causing damage. My sky is filled with multi-level clouds and haze, and a mix of several different cloud types. The wind is gone. Gradually the sky is beginning to clear a bit. Last night I could see Jupiter, Saturn, the Moon about a day from full, and in the morning, Venus. With a working telescope system already set up, it may be possible to shoot through cloud holes to image these objects during short periods of time. But that won't happen anytime soon.
Aside from the heat and humidity, and being sick for 3 days after every bout of heat stroke, there is blockage of the night sky by the roof, and balcony sides, at maybe 40% clearance, plus a Bortle 9.9 light polluted sky where only one star is usually seen. North is not visible. Celestron wants to find stars on the other side of the skyscraper for calibration, or stars blocked by the roof and side walls - a complete impossibility. Arduous manual alignment is sketchy at best and you really don't want to spend any time outdoors due to heat, humidity and poisonous air pollution wafted across the ocean from China. Unfortunately the promises of remote observing by Celestron did not come to fruition after two-plus years of struggling with the systems.
It is at this time I will invest in a new telescope system that is truly remote and gives the typical results of a one-meter primary reflector, where practically all functions of the telescope are autonomous and I can stay indoors under the air conditioner and use a working visual GOTO system with my computer systems and WiFi. The system will also shoot through light pollution and make corrections using autonomous software. In 2 weeks, the ball should be rolling on this new system and I plan to report the results in a new blog section. Stay tuned!