Here is the current state of play with the mini-WASP array project. Kieron of SCS Astro came to my rescue yet again with a third Paramount counterweight that I desperately needed before firing up the Paramount with the Sky 6. Thank you for bailing me out yet again Kieron 🙂 As you can see I haven’t bothered with any cable management at present, and that mess of spaghetti doesn’t even include the two cameras with their power supply leads, the autoguider connections, or the filter wheel USB cables – so there’s plenty more to get in there yet.
In the above picture the Paramount is pointing towards Polaris according to the Sky6 – so next clear night the idea is to shift the mount so that the mount’s optical axis is aligned to Polaris, then align all 4 telescopes to Polaris (visually). Next the cameras and filter wheels go on and the Paramount is re-balanced. Then I drift align the mount and finally I run a T-Point to get a map and to fine tune the Polar Alignment. At this stage I will run a periodic error correction program to fine tune the tracking and then finally after all that I might even start taking some images – so there’s plenty of things to do yet before true “First Light”.
