By Bill Pellerin

Houston Astronomical Society

GuideStar Editor

As observing equipment and imaging systems become more complex the likelihood that something will happen contrary to your expectations increases. I touched on this issue in a previous article about how it is necessary to really learn how our equipment works, in excruciating detail. Many times the problem is not the equipment, it’s our expectations or it’s our lack of knowledge.

The telescope mount that I use requires that several alignment stars be located (by me) as part of the setup process. While the process makes sense, now that I understand it, for a long time it didn’t. It didn’t make sense at first because it was different from other telescope mounts that I had used in the past. I was executing the process in the wrong order – expecting to first tell the mount that I was going to point it to an alignment star instead of moving the mount to the star and then telling the mount that I did.

If you’ve even been to a dog training class, you know that the class is more about training the owner and less about training Fido. That’s often the case with the equipment we use, using it is more about training the owner than making the equipment bend to the will of the owner. You have to get into the head of the equipment designer and understand his or her thinking when the equipment was created.

By Bill Pellerin

Houston Astronomical Society

GuideStar Editor

As observing equipment and imaging systems become more complex the likelihood that something will happen contrary to your expectations increases. I touched on this issue in a previous article about how it is necessary to really learn how our equipment works, in excruciating detail. Many times the problem is not the equipment, it’s our expectations or it’s our lack of knowledge.

The telescope mount that I use requires that several alignment stars be located (by me) as part of the setup process. While the process makes sense, now that I understand it, for a long time it didn’t. It didn’t make sense at first because it was different from other telescope mounts that I had used in the past. I was executing the process in the wrong order – expecting to first tell the mount that I was going to point it to an alignment star instead of moving the mount to the star and then telling the mount that I did.

If you’ve even been to a dog training class, you know that the class is more about training the owner and less about training Fido. That’s often the case with the equipment we use, using it is more about training the owner than making the equipment bend to the will of the owner. You have to get into the head of the equipment designer and understand his or her thinking when the equipment was created.

If you believe the manufacturer’s claim about “easy to set up and use” you’re also likely to believe the medical professional when you’re told that “this won’t hurt a bit”.

The state of the art on astronomical equipment is that this is not the same kind of mass-market product that a television set is. We should not expect the same ease-of-use as we expect of mass-produced appliances. Also, we’re often cobbling together systems by selecting parts from different manufacturers – mounts, telescopes, eyepieces, imagers, computers, guide scopes, guiding imagers, just to list a few. The obligation to determine the compatibility of these disparate products falls on the buyer of the products.

The complexity of the system contributes to the likelihood that something, anything, can go wrong. Let’s say that you have a system of ten components. Each of these components has a 95% chance that it will function correctly on any occasion. If the success of the process requires that all 10 components work, the likelihood that all will work is .95¹⁰ = .60 (60%). So you have about a 60% chance that the whole system will work when all the components are put together and since all probabilities must add to 100%, you have a 40% chance that it won’t work.

I remember, early on, having a 10” Coulter Odyssey telescope. Setup for this telescope was about 30 seconds. Set the base on the ground; set the tube in the base. Of course, this telescope had none of the modern conveniences, go-to, tracking, equatorial mount, and so on. All of the functions were performed by me. I was the computer, the drive motor, the tracking system and so on. These responsibilities don’t go away, they’re simply shifted from the operator to the system or vice versa.

What can go wrong?

• Cabling – too long (signal loss), defective (doesn’t make all the connections needed), noisy (electrical noise nearby causes problems). I learned, the hard way, that there is a maximum length for USB cables.

• Connectors – don’t provide a reliable electrical connection. (The worst is power connectors. When your system shuts down because a power connector came lose, you quickly look for a new solution.)

• Electronics – can malfunction, of course

• You – struggle with equipment / software you don’t understand

• Process – you leave out a step in your observing process, rendering your results invalid. (Document your process!)

What can you do?

• Learn your equipment. Practice using it. Read the manual; it’ll answer a lot of your questions. (I see a lot of questions on online discussion groups that I know are answered in the equipment manual.)

• Test things before you try to use them in the field

• Keep equipment in good shape. You take care of it, it’ll take care of you.

• Take your time. Nobody is measuring your productivity.

It’s not always a fair fight – you against your equipment – but you can get the upper hand by knowing its peculiarities and learning to work around them. Don’t give up; don’t surrender. If you think that you’re the first astronomer who has had to deal with these problems, you’re wrong.