25 june 2022

Observed with the 20-inch last night.  I ran the ServoCat from a battery, and I found the problem of the power cutting out is not from a dirty ground board, but from a kind of power failure in the unit when it tries to draw a lot of power when it starts a fast slew.  It happens in both alt and az.  I think the unit is about to fail.  In any case I will reset the slew rates to be very low, so as not to draw too much power, and hopefully get by using it until the next generation of controller is released.

I also experimented with SkyTools, and had the same problems with Real Time as before.  The object sorting makes no sense.  I will give it another try and see if the software owner can correct the problem.  Otherwise, I'll revert to SkyTools3 or find a different program to use.

I found only two items from the physical pairs list:

STF2106 AB: 508; 500x: Light orange stars, nearly 2 Dm, close but nicely split, PA near due south.  Spectral class F7IV (yellow-white).  WDS grade 4 orbit, 1270-year period.  0.841" now.  There is no overlap of the parallax ranges, -56%, and in spite of a very low 48 AU weighted separation, 1.6+1.3 Msol, it is probable this is not binary.

16h 51m 07.42s +09° 24' 15.5" P.A. 170.20 sep 0.8 mag 7.07,8.20 Sp F7IV dist. 64.23 pc (209.52 l.y.)

HU 580 AB: 508; 600x: With apodising mask and polarizing filter, I see a very weakly notched snowman with best seeing, PA ENE, a mere bump on the bright a star.  WDS grade 1 (definitive) orbit, 21.94-years, 0.154" now.  Unfortunately, there is no parallax data for either star.  It will be at apastron in 2024, so have another go at this soon, then dive to periastron by 2030.  Worth an annual visit.

15h 41m 33.09s +19° 40' 13.8" P.A. 58.50 sep 0.1 mag 5.35,5.22 Sp B9V+A1V dist. 58.28 pc (190.11 l.y.)