Tuesday, October 13, 2026

IEXOS100 Mount Goes To!

Once I managed to get the polar axis pretty well aligned on True North, it worked as promised. I did a 2 star alignment on Vega and Altair. Then i did a goto for the Double-Double, the two binary stars called Epsilon Lyrae. There they were. I still needed to use the pad to move them to exact center then tell the mount to sync. Each time you sync an object, the accuracy of the next goto improves 

Epsilon Lyrae is one of those systems that would be pretty cool to live near. Two of the four stars are A class: hot, bright and about two solar masses rotating around a common center of gravity about 900 years. The other pair are another another hot A and an F class (so cooler and redder but still hotter than Sol) in another 1200 year pas de deus. Both pairs are rotating around a common center of gravity on a 250,000 period. I do not think either would have habitable planets for man but if they did, it would be quite a show. 

At 15x, the Televue-85 splits them into two pair with both pairs showing some split. At 43x; the splits are more obvious.

It was so dark. After 20 minutes of dark adaptation as the rhodopsin regenerates, I could almost see stuff without my red headlamp. 

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