Walter's LogBook
	Mon/Tue, October 1/2, 2001

It was not a "usable" sky tonight, but I did develop a technique for getting the scope synchronized with the sky without having to remove the camera and use an eyepiece! I needed to do this becuase after doing flat frames at sunset, I didn't want to disturb the camera for the rest of the night.

Using the finderscope, I centered Vega in the crosshairs. Taking a picture, I found Vega was not in the frame. I assumed that I was within +/- one degree, so I set the field of view in ECU to 2 degrees, centered it on Vega, and activated the Hubble stars down to magnitude 13.0. Then I tried to match the stars in the image to the stars on the screen. On my fourth field I finally had a distinctive star pattern that I was able to match up on the screen! I synched on one of the stars in ECU, slewed to Vega, took an image and there it was!

ECU screen with stars to 13.0 and Vega roughly centered in a 2 degree field.

A field with a distinctive star pattern.

The box shows the field of view of the image that I matched it with.

ECU in variable star mode: turn off solar system, deep sky, and stars. All that's left is a display of LX200 alignment stars and my variable stars (both of which are set up as "user objects"). Zero magnitude stars are either cataclysmic variables or those that have been designated by the AAVSO as badly needing observations. 1.5 magnitude stars are long period variables.

This system allows me to quickly see the distribution and type of variables on the sky and plan my observing sessions on the fly!