I had my first opportunity to try to image the comet tonight. With a small window of opportunity before the Moon rose I traveled light and just set the DSLR on a tripod. This is a 30 second shot at ISO 6400. Maybe in a few days it will be clear again and I can use the SCT. The bright star at the top is Capella, the comet is a little lower and to the left.
I just got some 15×70 binoculars. Nominally for astronomy, I can see these being used for birding as well, mainly as an alternative to a spotting scope. The 70mm objectives will bring in a lot of light. For astronomy, I’ll use them with a parallelogram mount I built a couple years ago. For birding, with a conventional tripod. I arranged to have them delivered during Winter Storm Diego so that I can’t be blamed for the cloudy weather, it was already here.
I took Molly out with her new rocker box last night. The azimuth was smooth as the proverbial butter but altitude was rough. Something was rubbing and at about 27 degrees above the horizon something was catching. I was looking for something at 26 degrees so this was really annoying.
This morning I sanded down the sides of the bearings and applied turtle wax to the laminate. It didn’t really help much. As I moved Molly up and down it was still rubbing against something and there was still that rough spot. Up and down, up and down, then suddenly rougher noise and one of the furniture glides on the side popped out. For clarification, the bearings ride on four teflon pads and I have three furniture glides on each side to help keep things true. One of those popped out. Well crap. Or at least that is what I thought until I realized that Molly was moving up and down with ease now. From straight up to almost horizontal smooth. Yay! I think will leave the one glide out.
She stays where you put her now without the elastic counterweight and that was the whole point of the exercise.
