Hi everybody,
as you all can see, we have quite a few systems with some mayor and minor issues. I wanted to update you on what we are doing to fix them and get them back working:
iDK20 (Namibia)
Here we suffered a collision with the dome. Unexpected, of course. It changed the collimation and made it necessary to recollimate it. We will also add a counterweight in front to move the whole OTA a little further away from the dome, as to avoid any future contact. Plus, we will change the whole electrical cabling as we suffered some odd disconnections here and there.
H8 (Namibia)
Originally the focuser motor failed in january 2023. We sent down a spare one, but somehow the collimation went bust (or better: the tilt adjustment). We will switch to a new Moravian camera and recollimate it, checking also if the focuser is fine.
FSQ106 (Namibia)
The focuser motor is sometimes blocking the movement, leading to unreliable focus results. Will be swapped with another one.
RC360 (Namibia)
Also here the focuser is behaving oddly, but I need to investigate further to understand whats wrong.
All the issues in Namibia are scheduled to be corrected when I will be on site next week.
But, hell, the list goes on:
CDK500 (Spain)
This one is a little tragedy: After we changed the camera to a new C3-61000 several months ago we were only able to catch a few frames before the dome stopped working. Together with our hosting partner we came up with a quite drastic solution of changing the dome (while not touching the scope). It looks like we will be able to have the new dome mounted by end of april 2023.
Veloce (Spain)
We decided to swap the Veloce with all it's issues with a new H10 Newtonian astrograph, quite similar to the one in Namibia. Our hosting partner had some health issues with his staff, so this took much longer than normal. Anyway, we do expect the modified system to be moved into a new shed by end of april 2023, which will give us a better horizon view and of course the new optical train 🙂
RC16 (Chile)
The system itself is behaving fine after quite a bit of work, but there is something flexing in the imaging train. We now came up with a drastic plan, where the scope builder will himself fly to Chile to correct anything needed and then collimate it. This shall happen by may 2023.
Dreamscope (moved from New Mexico to Utah)
Still working on the collimation here, with slow progress.
