More Testing of the AP-1100GTO

Taking advantage of the nice day yesterday, I continued with testing the new mount.  I need to route new cables but the cables and power distribution box aren't going to arrive until Friday (today).

During the test I decided to put the planetary camera on the GT102 APO. Now the GT102 doesn't have a long enough focal length to take good images of the planets. For that I need the EdgeHD-11 SCT, which is my big scope and the reason for getting the new mount. But what the heck - I decided to image Venus since it is currently very bright and rather large in size. Should be easy to image even with the APO.

Now since the mount has not yet been aligned precisely to the north celestial pole, gotos would be off by as much as a degree or more. And, since it was daytime finding Venus took a bit of time. But find her I did and got the following image. Not great, but not all that bad either. By the way, Venus has very little surface detail so I didn't expect to see anything but the crescent moon-like image.

Venus 4/16/2020 4:16 PM
GT102 APO with ASI120mc Camera

Tomorrow (Saturday) the cables and power distribution box will be installed. Then, weather permitting, another test with the new cabling will proceed. I'm still waiting for the PoleMaster adapter to arrive which is needed to fully align the mount. Not sure why it's taking so long to get here. Need to check my vendor.