Neuro, yes it is a beautiful thing to behold. Their tagline at AP is "Dedicated to Craftsmanship" and they mean it, you can see it everywhere you look and how it performs. I have a Losmandy G-11 which is a fine mount but there were just a few little things that bugged me (mostly about the way the ASCOM driver functioned) that became a real headache for me in a remote observatory environment. The Software they've got to run this thing ("APCC" or AstroPhysics Control Center) is unbelievably powerful, And I'm just getting down into the deeper layers of it now. One example of how good this mount is: I was picking back up on an imaging project to get more data days later so at the beginning of the night I unparked, swiveled the dome, connected all the various bits of hardware, and just told the scope to "Slew to Target". I didn't do a plate solve first, or anything fancy, just go there "by the numbers". When I got there, my object was right there in the center of the field and it only took 1 try of "Center Object" to get it within the 15-pixel margin of error I had set. The Losmandy would have to try 3-5 times to hit that margin. We're lucky to have so many choices, SoftwareBisque is a great company too.
Hi Bill! Great video. I liked. I have the same mount as you.. AP1100 only encoder.. I am very happy, the new AP1100 are one great mount.. Greetings from Switzerland..
Got the mount installed and even swapped out the 500mm refractor for the 1200mm refractor with a new Moonlite focuser and motor. This mount is MORE than I hoped it would be!
Thanks! It's going to be an exercise in delayed gratification since I won't be able to deploy this thing until the 2nd week of January! Spending some quality time with the manual and planning all the cable management. One tip I got from talking to them is to put some "dry silicone" on the jackets of the cables that are inside the mount so they can't 'friction bind' as the mount slews from object to object. I'm hoping this thing will finally tame the 10" Ritchey-Chretien 2000mm scope!
Actually, it's going to be clear tomorrow and I'm going to image, but it won't be with the AP. It's pretty complicated when you start involving all the thru-the-mount cabling, pier adaptor, and all the software. I think it's probably going to take a whole day to install and then into the night to do polar alignment and testing and all that. I just didn't feel I could get all of that done before holiday travels so delayed gratification it is! But yeah, I'm well of that force in nature of what you speak. I really should buy all my astro crap in July and August because I KNOW it's gonna be cloudy anyway!
I like it very much! I switched over the rain sensor to the cloudwatcher from the one that comes with the NexDome because it can't accurately distinguish between rain and heavy dew which we have here. I also just put a much better focuser and focus motor on the 152mm refractor there and it's very sweet. Waiting for good weather now!
@@BillGwynneTheSkyGuy This is terrific! I am very happy for you. 152 mm refractor is excellent choice. All my scopes have Moonlite focuser. Superb piece of equipment. What do you use?
How do you keep security level of remote observatory? All equipment (multi-thousand backs equipment) could be stolen. Camera alone will not be enough. Right? You will just see that someone is cleaning your observatory. And nothing can be done about it. So, what are solutions for security? This is only point that stopping me doing remote observatory. By the way, did your pictures improved?
These are good points. However, you have to be realistic about risk assessment. First of all, my 'remote' observatory is only 50 min away so it's not THAT remote. If I saw somebody cleaning it out I could call and have the cops there fairly quickly. How likely would it be that someone would encounter it and know what's in there? Is there anybody around there that you can trust to call to check on some things? Is it likely that someone would have the means to transport this heavy stuff even if they could figure out how to disassemble it all quickly? Are you worried about getting burglarized by common thieves or by other astronomers? You can have a security system that dials the police immediately if one of the entry sensors is tripped or after you verify that there's something bad actually happening. Also if you were a non-astronomer and you saw one of these, I think it's just as likely to be thought of as a weather station or something; "remotely operated robotic telescopic observatory filled with expensive stuff" is probably NOT going to be the first thing that crosses someone's mind I'm thinking. So because of the circumstances of its location, and the other factors, I deem that there is an acceptable risk for my situation. As a last resort, you can buy insurance. If you can't create a situation with reasonable assurances that people aren't going to mess with your stuff then you shouldn't do it. My 2¢ Bill
@@BillGwynneTheSkyGuy Good points. I could definitely have observatory like yours; bortle 2 1h drive. However, the best scenario is when it is like astro village. Otherwise, some hosting facilities. But, those are expensive. What about picture improvements with AP mount? They also notify me in October 2022 about mount arrival. I skipped it, and went for portable mount.
@@anata5127 When you get to this level of mount there are layers of complexity that you can dig down into as you know more. I was getting tracking (RMS combined) in the 0.5 to 0.7 arc-sec range and then I found about doing an all-sky mapping session which is stored on the mount. I did this 2 nights ago and my guiding improved to the 0.3-0.4 arcsec range and contained a lot fewer 'surprises" than before. Finding stuff in the sky, centering it, plate-solving doing projects over multiple nights are all much more reliable with something like this. I'm about to swap out the 550mm fl scope for a 1200mm focal length scope for 'galaxy season' and that should give me some additional info about how things look
@@BillGwynneTheSkyGuy Great. I didn’t know that AP1100 has all-sky mapping. Anyway, you gain in convenience, you gained in consistency, you learned to operate at highest complexity, but did you get better FWHM and sharpness of pictures on fl=550mm scope. And answer is ….
@@anata5127 Yes, my guiding is better by 35 to 50%. I've only done two final images with it and both of them represent my finest work. Find me on AstroBin and look for "Rosette Nebula 2023"
Because it works really, Really, REALLY well. They’ve also made a sizable investment in the development and testing of the control software which is amazing as well. Think there’s no difference between a BMW and a Yugo? Same here.
