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LMO Power Outage & Manual Pointing
Party Like It's 1885!
Dave Sappington & Boris Starosta -
ABSTRACT: Occasionally we've found the 26" telescope digital coordinate readouts inoperable typically as a result of a power failure (the PC that runs the readout shuts down). On those occasions, we've been able to point the telescope using the original hour angle circle and declination periscope. Our presentation will explain why we were at the LMO on 9 April at 4AM. Show you how we work the telescope when there is power, and how its done without power. We’ll walk through the 26” upgrades history. We’ll explain how we find DSOs when there is no power by star hopping. Then in the dome room we’ll show the 26” anatomy and how to manually find RA and Dec. Manually pointing the 26” without the computer is an art form.
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CV:Dave Sappington grew up in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and graduated from UVa’s School of Engineering and Applied Science with BS degrees in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science. Along with two UVa colleagues, Dave later formed the Charlottesville engineering company Commonwealth Computer Research, Inc. aka CCRi. Over the years CCRi developed data analytics and software solutions for a variety of commercial and governmental clients. After General Atomics acquired CCRi in 2021, Dave had more time for other pursuits including CAS, which he joined in 2021.