Hi there,
sorry for not posting much lately, has been a busy time 🙂
A few pointers on what ought to come and what issues we are having:
Issues:
- H8 Namibia: The mount tends to stop tracking in RA more oten than usual. We are investigating this together with ASA: maybe it's temperature related, but it might need simply some greasing...
- iDK20 Namibia: The mount had an issue with the RA encoder. We hope we were able to resolve it, but it is still not completely clear if the issue originates from there. Last night it worked decently well, but we still need to see a whole-night run to be sure.
- Veloce Spain: This system has become a mayor issue, and we basically shut it down. Look further down at upcoming improvements for more details, but let me say that we decided to change the whole optical train.
- CDK500 Spain: The system would work fine, if the damn dome would work. Discussing this issue with the hosting partners we came up with a long-term solution of a new dome, but this means that it will still be out of order for the next couple of months 🙁
- Dream Astrograph: Long story short, it has been decollimated by error on site. The result is that we will move the system to another place in the US in the coming weeks.
Plenty of issues, right? I am absolutely unhappy about this long list, but at least there are a few upcoming news that help 🙂
Upcoming improvements and news
- New RC16 in Chile: We got the new system in Chile, and it should be up and running by the end of january 2023. First tests indicate that it will have the best resolution of any of our systems, with the nice Moravian camera heping as well 🙂
- New Astrograph in Spain: This one will replace the Veloce: 10" f2.8 corrected astrograph with an IMX455 camera, with similar optical performance as the H8 in Namibia. We expect it to be up and running by end of January 2023 as well.
- New Dome for the CDK500: Will take a little longer, but hopefully will resolve the reliability issues we had.
- RC360 back online: The fixed camera is back in Namibia, and shall put the system back in operation by mid-january
- Dream Astrograph: Will be overhauled by Dream Telescopes and then put into anew hosting place in Utah, together with a brand new IMX455 camera.
Well, that#s it for now. There are some other exciting news regarding our web interface and also our cooperation with Voyager Astro Software coming up, but these will be revealed further down the road 🙂
