Another nice star party in family atmosphere. We have also managed to visit University's of Poznan Astronomical Observatory.

But it was not without problems, a bit frustrating event to me ;-) - read on!

The even is very small - there are only 18 sleeping places - so only some "elite" observers do attend ;-)

Day 1.

I have arrived in the afternoon and set my standard equipment - AP400, BabyQ with SXV as main imager and SXV guide head. Some focusing and I was done - well almost. As I tried to calibrate on stars close to meridian, my AP400 mount was constantly trying to flip sides. Finally forced it to calibrate and locate a target. At this time of the year, we have astronomical night only starting at 22:30, so I have imaged some 12 x 3min frames of the Comet Garrad (it moves quite swiftly)and than probably 5 or 6 x 10min integrations of NGC7023 Iris. Around midnight, some cirrus bands were traveling across the sky. There was a severe storm in the forecast and lightening could be seen all evening and night (and could be heard later on), apparently approaching. After a quick check of the satellite weather images, we all decided to tear down around 1AM - I have left only tripod covered with a tarp, and all other equipment in the car. It was a good move as a very severe storm came later in the night, the sky was constantly lit by lightening and a lightening strike completely damaged large farm shed few km away. My friend Dominik however decided to leave his setup under the fisherman's tent. The storm passed by and in the morning we had blue sky again.

Day 2.

During daytime, there was a trip organized to see the University of Poznan Astronomical Observatory. Nice place, located on the city outskirts (not usable anymore for any serious imaging, but still probably good for photometry, astrometry and specstroscopy). We have seen:
a) A nice mechanical watch, used till WWI for accurate time measurement (pendulum moving in vacuum on special support, to be located in a dedicated bunker, with temperature stabilization, accuracy around 1s per year) - now on display only;
b) An old (XIX century?) Zeiss 20cm f/15 refractor on a massive GEM - now used mainly for initial years of astronomy study and calculations by students, and it could be so nice public viewing instrument. Unfortunately, the lens was not properly maintained, was flooded many times in the past as the dome was leaking in, so the glass is now probably permanently fogged;
c) Than we went to see the newest acquisition - Plane Wave 60cm f/10 D-K on direct drive alt-az mount - a piece of beauty, moving silently with amazing speed. Scope is located in a nice 5,5m dome manufactured by a friend of us - Jacek Pala (ScopeDome). It is now settled in the observatory garden on a simple concrete pad, but the plan is to get it fully tested including instruments and than relocate to a dark location for serious scientific work. Definitely seems to be one of the most modern telescopes in Poland. Dominik was questioning the quality of the scope, but by the special "glare" in his eyes I could see he is jealous and already contemplating if the mount would fit under his roll-off roof ;-)
d) Finally, we were visiting a laboratory where a new spectroscope is being prototyped - high but not extreme resolution (to 100m/s) - suitable for pulsating stars and spectroscopic binaries but too coarse for planet hunting - besides, with 60cm scope and 30min integrations it can reach only 11m stars. Interesting was the professional CCD camera - SiTe (?) 2kx2k chip with high QE, cooled down to -100C with dark current of 1e-/hour ;-) Would put a shame to all FLIs and Apogees.

In summary - nice 1 hour visit but required 2 x 2 hours drive in a small bus with malfunctioning air condition and outside temperatures ranging around 30C.

Than was the evening - a disaster. The night was not perfect - lots of moisture after the storm and some fog. While setting up, I have noticed some play in the way camera was attached, I have tightened the threads and ... the camera orthogonality went badly off. Not really usable and I forgot to take adapters required for field collimation. So after few initial exposures, I have parked the scope pointing at Polaris, powered down and disconnected everything, unscrewed the camera and adapters (I do have SXV connected to old Meade OAG unit with SXV guide head), screwed the 2" output and installed another camera - ST-8300 (now on TS-OAG27 with Lodestar). Powered everything up. Unfortunately I did not have SBIG drivers installed on my old imaging laptop, but fortunately I have taken my small netbook computer with the drivers installed previously - so I could attach ST-8300 to netbook and Lodestar, mount and Robofocus to my second laptop. No way to calibrate autocenter in Maxim or Focusmax, but at least I could image.

Or so I thought. I have focused Lodestar, calibrated guiding, focused ST-8300 (on a star in a corner, viewing star shape and not only FWHM or max count), commanded the camera to reach -15C. But images went out fuzzy - apparently, the camera nicely fogged and than iced when cooled. I tried to wait some time - sometimes such ice would slowly migrate to cold finger - but not that time. I did have my Canon DSLR but was too frustrated, so gave up and covered everything at 2 AM. I did not have any adapters to attach Canon to the scope. No single usable exposure that night!

Dominik also had some problems that night - while the fisherman's tent survived the storm nicely, the equipment inside was dipping with water (condensation?). Upon powering up, the mount "run off" in a random direction w/o ability to stop. Closer inspection revealed some bubbling / watery noise from inside the controller, which indeed turned out to hold half of a glass of water. After drying it thoroughly with hair drier, it started to function again. Also, his lens dewed later in the night, and inspection next morning revealed broken wire to dew heaters - which we soldered in the filed.

Day 3

Next morning I have decided to resurrect ST-8300. It requires half dismantling to get to the dissicant package (one needs to take filter wheel cover off, remove the carousel, remove filter wheel body from the camera, remove shutter, remove camera window and finally loosen screws holding dissicant pack and anti-glare baffle). Maybe not very complex but definitely an hour job, allowing dust to the camera chamber, and based on my observations, would require the procedure to be repeated every few months. So after removing the dissicant, I decided to bake it. There was an electric oven which I set to 200C and I put the bag into a little jar and backed it the oven for 2 hours. Bad idea. apparently the pack was not designed to be baked in such temperatures, after the procedure, there was just some brownish powder in the little jar... Fortunately, someone had a solid dissicant - in a form of a fiber-like mat, so I could cut a small piece and fit it inside the camera. Assembled all back and left for the rest of the day. And the day was extremely hot - 35C, so we all stayed inhouse or in a shadow and significantly increased national beer consumption. I have also installed SBIG drivers on my main imaging laptop (based on my past experience, I do always carry with me a small portable HDD with copes of installation discs of every piece of software I use) and also prepared Canon DSLR with 200mm lens as a backup solution. Finally, I have also double checked time and location settings in AP400 - apparently for some reason, the DST was not set properly, so the mount miscalculated location of meridian and this was the reason for flips.

Than finally the last night was a success. The nigh was very clear and transparent, unusually warm (25-22C), no dew but very windy. Some users of longer scopes (there were TEC140, FS102 and similar scopes in the field) decided to tear down before midnight. The camera did not fog, autoguider was running smooth, mount was not doing any unnecessary flips and the wooden heavy AP/Baader tripod provided the required wind resistance. I imaged 8 x 5min M101 with new supernova, than surroundings of M103 and adjacent clusters NGC663 and NGC659 and finally managed 2 hours of luminance of NGC7023 Iris. Dominik was pushing me towards Gamma Cas nebulae, but this I hope to capture next time. We also did some visual observing with a little FS60 - very nice views, especially with 13mm Nagler and Orion Skyglow filter but also with OIII, although aperture is a bit small for that last one. There was also a nice 40cm Dob set on the field, which we did use, but it was not always easy due to the wind. At 4 AM, only us 3 of the weathered expedition team (Dominik, Bogdan and yours truly) were in the field to take flats and cover equipment ;-)

Day 4 - return home.

After the trip I have a list of "lessons learned" and "to-dos" of 25+ positions, the most important are:
1) never give up
2) be even more prepared (should have camera collimating adapters - than it would be 20min job, should have wide-T ring to attach Canon to the telescope, so I could use the rest of second night)
3) do even more homework before (I did not properly test SXV orthogonality with the new Meade OAG neither used recently ST-8300).

Probably sounds to many seasoned observers as a typical imaging experience ;-)