Nice walk on "'Het Merkske" near Castelre

Today we went for a walk at "Het Merkse" near Castelre, here's a buzzard flying high in the sky..

"Dagpauwoog" butterfly

Woodpeckers.....

Spring is starting in Holland!

Last Saturday we went for a walk at the "Merkse" near Castelre, in the vicinity of Hoogestraaten Belgium. At the end of the walk we came by a meadow full of lambs...

Celestron CGE repaired!

After many months of struggeling, an Astroforum.nl member decided to repair his troublesome Celestron CGE mount together with me. I did some careful measurements on the electronics, the cooling of the motor driver IC has been improved. After careful testing this beautiful mount is working ok again! Now I have some time for the Takahashi setup of Halley again.

Here's the operation table, with 2 Fluke multimeters, laboratory power supply with current limiter and electrical drawings of the Celestron CGE mount.

Here we are testing the repaired mount, note the 1.5A current on the 12VDC power supply.

"Achterhoekweekend" of the Dutch www.astroforum.nl

This weekend was the biggest astroparty in the Netherlands: The "Achterhoekweekend". It was a marvellous experience, we could observe 2 nights. The Saturdaynight was the best, highlights were NGC4356, a m13.3 galaxy (personal record) and the Whale galaxy NGC4631. I also observed this galaxy in Norberts 18" Dobsonian, what a feast!

Here we are, observing many faint galaxies in Virgo, Coma Berenices and Leo......

Here I'm checking which parts of the CGE control boards are still ok......because there was 12VDC on the 5VDC....Only the resistors are still ok.

This is the 18" Dobsonian where I observed the Whale galaxy in.

Here you see some of the telescopes used. The biggest one is the 18", besides that are a 250mm travel-dobsonian and a classic dobsonian.

There's always plenty of stuff that needs to be adjusted/collimated/repaired. Therefore I always take my tools with me.

This is me dressed up in full gear for observing. Those winter nights can be very cold and I'm prepared for that.

No spare parts for the CGE......

Unfortunately, the spare PCB boards for the CGE mount were not received......This evening I carefully studied CGE problems and the electronic design. What worried me is that the specification of the RA/DEC motors is 18ohm, while the driver IC on the control board can continuously drive a load of 600mA: 20ohm. When performing a long high-speed slew this IC can become overheated. It can be replaced by a heavier version that can deliver 1A continously. Maybe that is a better option.