chatted and guided

Manuel phoned.

Said he had talked to John about roofers. John said there was one he had started to deal with but found them very poor. Who? I asked. He didn't know. Thought it didn't matter. Au contraire. I said we should know who the bad choices in the Blue Mountains are as much as the good.

Then we talked about the weekend. He wanted to know if I was going to the CAO. Hadn't decided. But I was not leaning toward it. With a bright Moon. And being on duty the following weekend... Needed a break. He was getting hungry for photons. I thought he was making plans for the long weekend? To camp at the CAO... Did he mean to go both weekends now?

He talked about imaging Messier 51. I asked why. Why that particular deep sky object. It was partly that it is an attractive galaxy. He likes galaxies. I reminded him that it was low. And descending through the current evenings. Best captured at the end of May. Imagining M51 now would be challenging, require precision, and quick set-up, so to nail the polar alignment. I suggested the ideal situation would be to set up the telescope and mount on one night, get good polar alignment, configure and test. Ensure the guiding was working. And get settled with the focuser hardware and software. The following night would be the high quality imaging run. Not practical at his home or at the nearby parkette.

He wants high quality. I asked why he didn't consider targets that were higher in the sky. Particularly, if quality was important. What about M102 aka NGC 5866? A beautiful unique galaxy. Still a bit late for it. He mentioned Andromeda again. Ah yes. But a bit early in the season for that one... I said it is highest in November. Then he suggested the Veil Nebula. There ya go. Good choice.

Manuel proposed he'd shoot the Veil Nebula with his 8-inch SCT. Whoa, whoa. What? Which camera? The QHY9 he posited. He thought that would work well. I differed. I pointed out that'd he'd only get a fraction of one element. About half or a third of one of the remnants. This is a very large object. The best 'scope was the refractor. The QHY9 on the 80mm would work beautifully. He was wriggling, not comfortable with this.

Then he said, the electronic focuser would not work on this 'scope. Oh. I see. We wondered out loud about adapters. But I suggested that focusing with the refractor on the Veil might be easily done with manual control. 52 Cygni was there. A focusing mask could be used.

As we wound down, I wanted to emphasise a key point. That collimation was not something that would regularly need adjustment. He should avoid touching it. He thought there was collimation problem during his last session when in fact it was a focus and light path length issue. He changed the good collimation and made it worse. I assured him he had not damaged anything. But urged him to not change it without considering all the factors. If the image looked out of focus, he'd have to adjust the focal length.

Lots of balls in the air.