It’s imaging dead time again as we enter the summer months and it never really gets dark at my latitude. Time once again to do all those chores which we don’t bother with when we’re getting on with the real work of imaging. So, if you have a nice white fiberglass dome, now is the time to bring it back into pristine condition by washing off all the collected murk of the last year and maybe finishing with a bleach rinse to keep the green stuff at bay a little longer. If like me, you have your dome on wooden decking, now is the time to give your decking the Sadolin treatment to keep it rot free for another year. Check that the interior is still waterproof and that the sealant all round the base is still o.k. If not, remove all the old sealant with a blunt knife and reapply new stuff. Vacuum out and dust the interior of your observatory and remove any unwanted inhabitants that have taken up residence. Finally, if you do not have your computer connected to the Internet in your observatory, take it indoors and get all the updates loaded up. Also load up any new software that you might have acquired during the past year and check it all works indoors before taking your computer back outside to your observatory again. Check all your wiring and see that nothing is chaffing as your telescope skews across the sky. Finally check that the earth leakage circuit breaker functions correctly – we don’t want to lose you out in the darkness on a cold winter’s evening.
Well we have to suffer this month, and most of next month before it becomes too unbearable and we go out at silly hours just to get an image – any image. Hang on in there, just need to brave it out for 6 more weeks 🙁
