Michael,

For your trip I think the rule should be 'Keep it Simple!'

You can sort out the electronics at home, just setup the camera on a table
and check your laptop will communicate with it*. In all likelyhood you
will only have one serial port on your laptop and you'll need that for
PictorView to control the 'scope, so TheSky will be useful only for a
planetarium display rather than for pointing the telescope (it's a
complication you don't need anyway at this stage).
Practice connecting the equipment together and taking it apart.
If you get chance, practice focussing! - this will be time-consuming first
time out, but becomes much easier and faster with practice.
Be satisfied that your Polar-alignment technique is adequate to give 2-3
minute un-trailed exposures - train your PEC carefully. Forget the 201XT
for now until you get the basics right.

You can take a library of dark frames during the day for use later in the
field. Use a standard camera temperature (-10 should easily be attainable,
-15 or -20 would be even better but the maximum really depends on ambient).
Take your dark frames for specific time intervals you're likely to use such
as:
30s, 1, 2, 3, 5, 10, 15 minutes. Name the files so you can easily recall
what they are. If you want to be clever, take multiple darks at each time
point (and each temperature if you expect to use more than one) and average
them using the image-combine function in the software.


* That reminds me, having recently exchanged my 'Observatory' laptop for a
networked desktop PC I had to check out the 416XT connection. I have WIN98
on this and a simple 2902 PCI Adaptec SCSI card (no bios). The 416XT
connected first time and works great, but WIN98 will insist on trying to
install drivers for it every time! (I just ignore it).


Chris Heapy

> ----------
> Sent: 07 June 1999 21:00
> Subject: [M]: pictor 416 learning curve
>
> Hello all!
>
> The Mapug mail seemed a little slow today so I thought I would invite some
>
> help.
> I am finally going to tackle the 416. With the manual, Chris Heapy's
> idiot's
> guide, and advice from all of you, I hope to tackle the 416 learning curve
>
> with the help of clear, dark skys and plenty of time on a trip to eastern
> Oregon during the first two weeks of July.
> ......snipped
>
> Michael
>

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