Skywatcher Star Adventurer Portable Setup Part 3
No observations today - it was cloudy today and the New Mexico telescopes were very busy.
Skywatcher Star Adventurer Portable Setup Part 3
Mount Battery Test
I switched the mount on yesterday morning at 6 a.m. with a fully charged battery. I set the camera to point east. It was still running at midnight having rotated 270 degrees and the camera was now pointing north. So the drive motor will certainly run for 18 hours which means the lightweight battery will last a full night of imaging without any problem. It can then be recharged for the next night's work. I left the mount on and just checked it at 7 a.m. - still going - so it has now lasted 25 hours. I will leave it running and report back. I have certainly solved the problem of powering the mount with minimum weight implications. I finally switched it off at 12 o clock after it had run for 30 hours driving the telescope.
The battery is shown below
The battery plugs into the Star Adventurer mount as shown below
Here is a closer view that also shows the autoguiding input and the fast/slow buttons and the switch that is set to the northern or southern hemisphere as appropriate. The internal battery cover is shown to the right hand side. This is a bit fiddly but the external battery means I do not have to access the battery compartment.
At a later stage I will test the battery life on the camera I will take a sequence of 30 second shots, storing both jpeg and RAW files for each and see how long the battery lasts.
To be continued.