For the third time in about 6 weeks, I’m headed to California. The first two trips involved me attending the Pacific Astronomy and Telescope Show in Pasadena and the Advanced Imaging Conference in San Jose.
Today, I fly to Orange County’s John Wayne Airport, from which I’ll make a 2-hour drive to the Observer’s Inn, located in Julian, which lies in the northeastern part of San Diego County. Once there, I’ll be testing the new AXD mount from Vixen Optics.
I’m most excited, however, about also putting the mount’s new computerized controller, Star Book Ten, through its paces. This isn’t Vixen’s 10th incarnation of this mount. Rather, the Japanese word ten means “heavens,” and, according to the company, that’s what the controller will show you.
The controller’s database contains the positions of 273,332 objects. Hmm. Looks like I’ll be gone awhile. Although I won’t be writing an observing story, I’ll have to look at many deep-sky objects to ascertain the pointing accuracy of the AXD mount/Star Book Ten combination.
So, stay tuned. Over the next 3 days, I’ll blog about my progress and let you know how the mount’s doing, what I’ve been observing, and how cool the Observer’s Inn is. And, depending on how good the cell phone reception is, I’ll also tweet when I can.