helped at parkette (Etobicoke)

Helped Carsten and Manuel at the parkette. Set up and tear down.

Once again, Manuel seemed to struggle with polar aligning his Atlas. The mount was not level; he had misread the bubble level. He was way off initially from Polaris. I could tell by eyeballing it. And he didn't consider that a tightened tripod bolt would prevent the mount from rotating in azimuth. That was a light-bulb moment for him!

Carsten struggled with the colour MallinCam Xtreme on his Vixen VMC. When I had a go, in the latest Control software, I found the gain set way too low. Tagged the Ring Nebula. Beautiful. I also assured him the image on the external monitor was the same as the laptop, i.e. the hot pixels were the same. And urged him to use the TEC. Recommended a tether for the camera. Suggested strain relief on the cables. Checked out his little MallinCam USB video grabber. Discussed image file formats. Went to the Moon at one point to check settings and focus. I noted the small dark maria on the east limb: Grimaldi. Thought it was Copernicus, with the bright rays, to the south; nope, Tycho.

At one point, I wanted to "sync" the mount. Carsten couldn't remember exactly how to do it. We explored the menus but could not see anything obvious. He did not have the Orion manual on his computer unfortunately.

Learned about Nanuk Cases. Carsten had a couple. Tough, crush resistant resin, stackable. Like Pelican but a Canadian product. He also picked up an expensive pistol case from Base Pro. Cheap! Clever.

Noted Carsten's finder. A short straight tube; red dot visible within. 1x, I presume. Different. He shared that it is the baader planetarium SkySurfer. He really liked it.

I also noted his ruggedized Dell 630 XFR. Touch screen. Protective shell. SSD drive. Inexpensive on eBay.

Everybody was pretty happy by night's end. It was good meeting Carsten. Hopefully he'll make his way up to the Carr. I was encouraged by his learning style. He wants to know how things work, he wants to know the background, the theory. He wants to learn the sky.

§

I found notes about synching the SynScan.

1. Press the ESC key.
2. Hold the ESC again for 2 seconds.
3. Press ENTER.