My Brain Hurts

So far the learning curve for this project has been all over the board and it just jumped up from steep to straight up. I have spent some time over the last few days reading and highlighting in the 76 page Meade manual that came with the scope. Meade could have saved me a few highlighters by just printing the entire manual on orange paper, cause that's what it looks like now.

Before I headed back up north I couldn't resist unpacking the tripod for a look and wow is this thing huge! It was easy to see about 10 ways to pinch your fingers clean off your hand during setup. I had to see and get a feel for how comfortable I'd be with the mounted scope. Jim is coming up later this week and I know he would love to set up his new telescope but it just didn't make sense to bring it up here now. I'm glad I let it in the cities.

A few things I know for sure: the scope will have to be mounted on a equatorial wedge for photography; we will use the one star polar alignment and we have to learn celestial coordinates in right ascension and declination, for when we permanently mount our telescope. It's smart mount system and the mount will learn about, and then correct for any systematic pointing errors, regardless of the cause. So I'm thinking that last part means this telescope will get smarter the more we use it. Our bet is that in less then a year it turns into Hal from 2001, A Space Odyssey and tricks us into going outside and then won't let us back in the building.

Now you know way my brain hurts.

I'm still working on the heated building design, it's down to about 6 styles including a fancy storage build plan from Menard's. Pat and I would like something unique but it will also have to deal with heavy snow loads, have a door that is easy to shovel out and room enough to take off winter clothes. Jim and I will be up the hill later this week trying to finish the surveying and nail down the site, I will post photo's later, till then.

Happy winter from Deer Yard Lake.