Star-Crossed Mars Expedition
We left home Saturday morning (
In
We began experiencing some sort of engine
difficulties about
half way to the site. The engine chugged,
lost power and finally died at milepost 304 on the grade up to
We let it set for about 10 minutes then tried to
start it
again. It started then died an agonizing
death. We were considering options. I finally called our local friendly Mobil
station back in
We got to the observing site about
It continued to be very cloudy so doing any astronomy was out of the question. I covered the scope with a tarp. It rained off and on all night long.
On Sunday morning, I continued setting up the telescope. I also rebooted my laptop computer which I had, up to that time, been putting in “hibernation”. After reboot, almost nothing worked. I could not “run” Regedit. I could not run Explorer to examine files. It gave every symptom of a severe virus. I was able to use FileSync to look at files. I was able to start up in safe mode with DOS and do some real looking around and trying various things. Somehow began to suspect ZoneAlarm. Rebooted, killed ZoneAlarm and everything began working. Cost me several hours. I still don’t know what it is doing because it worked OK at home when I was on the network with the wireless network card. That was the problem though and it was not a virus.
Sunday afternoon I experimented with the new 9 dB gain cell phone antenna I bought so I could call back to work. I could not establish a connection even though there was an indication of a “roam” network. Finally walked out into big open field to see if I could find a place where it would work. Found a place amazingly. I marked it with some small logs so I could find it again. It seems to be only 10 feet in diameter or so according to tests I did. I came back to the motor home and climbed the ladder to put the antenna on top of it to see if that would work. It did not. I also unscrewed the tiny antenna on the cell phone because I wondered if that would help. Put the tiny antenna in my pocket and walked all over the field to see if I could locate any other communication “hot” zones closer to the motor home. I did not. However I did discover a hole in my pocket – after the tiny antenna had fallen through it – somewhere within the 5 acre area I had been walking in. I looked for it for a couple of hours. Then it started raining and I had to quit. I really hate losing stuff. I will look for it again.
There were three other occupied campsites within a quarter mile of us. They all left Sunday. We are now totally alone out here. A few cars go by on the road. We see one about every four or five hours.
The herd of cows came back in the evening after everyone else had left and they gathered around the motor home. They were extremely curious and we watched them and they watched us for about 40 minutes. I walked out to see if I could touch one but I could only get within about 50 feet.
Later Sunday evening, with Mars just barely
visible between
clouds, I finally got around to establishing communication with the
telescope. I could not make it
work. I worked on the problem from about
At about
Monday, I got up at 0600 and began working on the
telescope
communication problem. I had had
problems before with the ATEN USB to Serial cable installation. Fortunately, I brought along a floppy disk
with the latest driver downloads. Before
reinstalling, I decided to duplicate some of the information onto the
floppy. This somehow totally wiped the
floppy. I considered alternate
plans. Maybe Susan could drive to town,
buy some other flavor of USB to Serial cable and I could stay here with
the
scope – in the rain… I was able, however,
after much searching, to locate the ATEN drivers on my hard drive. Many reinstallations and many reboots and
running my telescope control program in debug mode with the compiler
system
finally showed that the driver was working but the telescope would not
communicate. The ATEN USB to Serial cable
had a red light
on but I didn’t know if that was good or bad.
They didn’t document it in their documentation.
Finally discovered that the telephone cable
to 9-pin serial adapter that I was using was wired differently than the
one I
had forgotten that I had put in the laptop case months ago. The one in the case was clearly marked
“LX-200” indicating that it was specifically for my telescope. I had wired it myself several months
ago. I did not realize that it was
essentially
non-standard… When I used it, the red light went out and the telescope
began
communicating. It was about
We ran the generator for several hours to drive the battery charger to try to restore the charge in the “house battery”. The hydrometer readings did not make me happy. I cannot seem to reliably recharge a deep-cycle battery in any reasonable amount of time no matter what I try. I think the ones I buy are essentially defective from sitting on the shelf before somebody buys them… Probably need a small self-contained generator.
It rained again from about
On Monday night, it was pretty cloudy until about
Tuesday morning started out promising. There was sunshine with just a few clouds. As the day progressed, the clouds got thicker – and thicker – and thicker…
I walked out 100 yards with the cell phone and the 9dB gain antenna out to the place I had marked where the cell phone would work. I called Victor and talked briefly with Victor and Fay. Then I called Danny and talked with him. Everything seems to be going reasonably well at work - except for “Charley” and his never-ending USB to Serial cable adapter problems. Danny says he has that under control.
At about
Wednesday evening during the uncovering of the scope, I noticed that the ToUcam camera was on because its red “recording” light was on. It should not have been on. I recalled that while using the computer earlier, I had gotten a surprise USB device installation message which I had wondered about. I am using three 15 foot USB repeater cables in series to talk from the computer within the motor home to the ToUcam camera. An hours worth of investigation revealed that the two outside cables were both failing. This was a real surprise and something I did not need just when the sky was finally clear after four days of truly bad sky for astronomy. I then moved the laptop PC outside onto a small table and connected the cables. I was then able to shoot images of mars. I set up Microsoft Outlook to notify me via the Calendar every half hour so I could make a 1000 frame AVI movie of Mars. I was able to take 1000 frames every half hour from 1030 through 0400.
During a couple of the shots, the telescope developed a mind of its own and changed its position as though it had received a command to point elsewhere. I am assuming that this was because of the extremely heavy dew that was drenching everything. I have been using the “Dew Zapper”, a 25 watt resistive strip that goes around the front of the scope to heat the corrector plate. It works extremely well but draws 2 amps from the battery… I had to run the generator since the batteries were getting low. I have placed two deep cycle batteries in parallel using jumper cables and this is what has been driving the equipment.
At 0400, it suddenly clouded over completely. This occurred within about 5 minutes. I covered the scope and went to bed.
I got up at 0900 Thursday morning.
There was bright sunshine. The
radio says it will not last through the
day. More thunderstorms are
expected. It is
I have the failing USB cables out drying in the sun in case the problem is moisture-related. I am hoping they will recover but somehow I doubt it… After a few hours, the cables still do not work.
Hydrometer readings taken on the batteries just now indicated that they are not in good shape. We have been running the generator this morning to charge them up. The charge is currently delivering 8 amps to the batteries. It probably will take 10 to 20 hours to get them charged up to maximum. It looks like I may need a small portable generator purely for running the telescope and its related equipment if we continue to do astronomy in the field.
Fortunately the motor home’s built-in generator operates for a long time on very little fuel. It gets its fuel from the main tank. According to the motor home manual, it will quit when there is less than a quarter tank of gas left. However it does use some of the main tank fuel and this is worrisome…
Yep, the sunshine didn’t last. At 1230, a few drops fell. We can hear even the smallest drops on our motor home roof when we are inside. I quickly covered the telescope. The rain increased in intensity. There was hail mixed in with the rain. Largest pellet I saw was 3/8 inch. I took some video of the hail bouncing off the ground and hope that it will show up in the video.
On Friday, I took the one good 15 foot USB extender cable and strung it through the nearest window instead of the usual wing window on the passenger door. I used duct tape to tape it up and over the walkway. It reaches the camera cable with a little to spare so I can now again set up inside the motor home.
There was no rain on Friday until about
So it is
At
I shot images every half hour. The last image was taken at 0400. The seeing for Mars by that time had deteriorated significantly since Mars was then low in the sky.
On Saturday, it did not rain for the first time. I played some banjo while awaiting
darkness. In
the evening, a small crowd of kids (perhaps
10 or more?) and about four adults gathered around and I let them look
at the
moon and at Mars. I also brought the
laptop outside and plugged everything in so they could see real-time
images
being produced by the ToUcam webcam. It
produces far more detail than one can see visually by looking through
the
eyepiece. I also showed them parts of my
web pages which I keep on the laptop as well as on the PC at home for
backup
purposes. Took more early evening Mars
images and called it a night at about
On Sunday morning (
So we drove out on the dirt road that is the
So, we got on the road again.
We stopped at Mund’s Park to fill up with
gas. It looked like everything would go
well. Then just after
When we got home, the first thing Susan wanted to
do of
course was to turn on her computer and download her E-Mail. We had both shut everything down carefully
before we left for the trip. We powered
down all power strips. Everything was
shut down normally and totally off.
However, when we returned and she powered everything up, her
computer
did nothing. It just sat there. I was really tired but I took her computer
apart to see what was wrong. It looked
like a power supply problem since nothing was happening at all. I checked the power switch by measuring the
resistance when it was on and off and it appeared to be working
perfectly. I got on the internet to find
information on
troubleshooting power supplies. Found
some good information showing which pins to short on the 20-pin
connector to
see if the fan would run. It would not
so the power supply definitely appeared to be the problem.
At
I checked my Email and found congratulatory messages about the fact that my earlier Mars movie had been posted on the Astronomy Picture of the Day NASA web site! This was a surprise. It was posted on 23 September 2003. Here is the URL: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap030826.html