One nice and clear evening I decided to run first light for the balcony observatory. The main reason was to check how it works in practice, even though there is no permanent shelter for the mount nor permanent cabling.

I put the mount on, connected cables and attached the scope. I have used my "field cabling box" so all the cables were ready but off course I did not routed them through the mount. I do already have a power outlet on the balcony, so only needed to route single USB and 2 x RS232 cables inside.

Exact location and time have been updated in the Mach-1 controller.

Some time ago I have already checked direction towards south, so could eyeball rough mount orientation. Than the mount was set according to AP "basic" procedure - Park 1 -> level -> Park 2 -> level -> Park 1 - adjust polar axis elevation. Than I waited till some stars did appear and roughly adjusted polar axis azimuth.

Finally, when more stars become visible, I have used AP / my "GOTO assisted" polar alignment method - but was only able to use finder scope. Unfortunately - as usual when needed - the batteries in finder died promptly, so it was a bit inconvenient to shine red flashlight into the finder tube - but doable. I did not end with perfect polar alignment but "good enough" for first light.

The imaging setup for tests was Takahashi FSQ85 and SBIG ST-8300.

Than it was all easy - focus starting from a predefined position, calibration of GOTO under Maxim (for "point telescope here"), calibration of the guider, GOTO to a star, plate solve and sync scope to the solved position.

Total time probably around one hour, but obviously once the observatory is finished, the mount and cabling will be permanently set so I will only have to attach the scope and would be ready to go.

Than I have quickly defined a 2x2 mosaic covering Veil nebula and started to image fist panel in Ha. The mount was tracking very well despite not perfect alignment - peak error values in 0,2pix range, typical RMS error <0,06 pixel.

I have even managed to capture 9 x 15min of Veil, but the last image arrived fogged - the camera chip has fogged again :-(

Nevertheless, it was time to quit for the night, Vail was just about to disappear behind the roof, if not for the dew on the chip, I would probably collect some Ha for galaxies (M33 and M31) for future use.

Tearing the setup down took probably 10 minutes - power off from the house, disconnect cables, scope in, mount in, power box in.

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What went well:

What a pleasure to run imaging session in a safe and controlled environment, being seated in a warm room.

The balcony and pier are solid enough - I could walk out to check sky conditions and could observe probably 0,1 pixel shift on the tracking graph in DEC.

Mount can be polar aligned well (for the permanent setup - I will definitely spend some more time and probably use tools like PAMax)

Mount tracks very well and will definitely support imaging with up to 1m and maybe more.

It will definitely be able to point anywhere on the sky visible and will do meridian flips w/o problems.

GOTO Stage 3