Cloudy Daze: Downtime Maintenance — Loran Hughes Astrophotography

In case you've wondered why I haven't posted much lately, it's been cloudy. The good news is that it's been great, temperature-wise. The bad news? It's cloudy.

With the downtime, I've been able to work on my cabling. You see, everything is controlled with either a hand controller or a laptop. My goal is to go 100% laptop and control my viewing and astrophotography from the comfort of my home office. But I need to be sure that the various cables don't catch as the mount and telescope move.

The first thing I did was invest in a USB hub. That way, I only have one cable to the laptop and it doesn't move (on my last outing, a camera cable nearly pulled the laptop off its stand). So I found a USB 3 hub with a USB C (A.K.A. USB 3.1) cable on Amazon. But since it only comes with a 2 foot cable, I bought a 3 foot extension. That's where I ran into issues.

It turns out USB C doesn't like long cables. My camera worked just fine, but the telescope mount was a no-show. Finally, I disconnected the extension and bingo! The mount sprang to life.

Next, I routed cables so they wouldn't catch on knobs and what-not while the telescope slews. As luck would have it, the sky cleared that evening and I tried out my handiwork. It was mostly good, but I had one cable nearly catch as it pulled across the mount. I'm definitely going to have to put more thought into this problem.

The laptop which controls the mount and the camera is connected to an ethernet cable running from the garage. I was able to pop into my office in the house and give it a whirl. I had a good connection and could control the telescope from my iMac. This goes a long way to make winter viewing possible for me - in theory anyway.