u/EastAcanthisitta43

I use NUCs for controlling telescope mounts, cameras and other equipment. I set up this equipment each time I use it, and reconnect all of the cables as part of that assembly process. I’ve found over the years that it’s really helpful for driver management and software coordination to reconnect all of the devices to the same USB port every time. I also label every cable and port to make this easily repeatable . I also usually make a spreadsheet of which cable goes to which port, and all of the relevant information like descriptions found in the Device Manager, including COM port numbers. Another handy thing to have when out in the middle of nowhere and things aren’t connecting correctly.

I was setting up a new NUC this weekend and labeled the USB ports. This time instead of numbering them with really random numbers, 1 thru 6, I numbered them with their associated COM ports. It occurs to me that I don’t really know that the relationship between the USB port and the COM port number fixed. Is that a fixed relationship, or can there be some condition that causes it to change making my labeling confusing?

I’ve made some pretty large astronomy purchases lately. I’m kind of getting ready for retirement, getting a good range of scopes so I can cover lots of different sized objects. Last year I bought a Celestron C 9.25 Edge HD and set it up with a microfocuser and all the bells and whistles. Not kidding, I have brushless fans installed in the tube to acclimate it , USB powered bells and a bluetooth whistle. So when I bought it I spent a reasonably large chunk of treasure on it. While figuring out what I wanted and needed to make it all work together I ended up with quite a few questions.

More recently I bought a Pegasus Astro Prodigy Microfocuser for my club’s Celestron C-14 black tube. When the club bought this scope, Edge HD technology might have been a concept on some computer somewhere at Celestron, so it’s just a plain old SCT. When I bought the focuser I did not buy the correct adapter between the focuser and the rear thread cel on the scope. That turned out to be a challenge.

Both of these purchases required me to reach out to astronomy vendors for advice. Both of those experiences were so very disappointing. First getting in touch with a living person is nearly impossible. Call them and you get voicemail saying they’ll get back to you. “It’s much faster to use the chat feature”. Worse though is emailing, waiting for an answer, then getting a response that you know is wrong. With my 9.25 EHD I wanted to get rid of the factory dovetail and put a big ol’ solid hunk of aluminium with scope rings on it. The sales person told me I didn’t need to worry so much about flexure and rock solid mounting. I reminded him that I was planning on capturing narrow band at f/10. He said I should get a focal reducer to make it easier. I would have greatly preferred it had he just sold me the dovetail and rings that I ended up buying from another vendor. 

This go round with the Pegasus Astro Prodigy was another experience. If you’re not familiar with the Prodigy, it’s a zero backlash focuser that moves the camera, not the focus knob, in 2.5 micron steps. 6000 2.5 micron steps. And it has a 3” aperture. What a nice piece of equipment. Now I don’t need that much aperture, today, but I don’t know what equipment will come around next year. It doesn’t make sense to me to reduce the clear aperture unnecessarily. For this purchase I went to a well known astronomy vendor that I have always heard as the goto vendor if you need particularly finicky stuff, and it is the fount of all knowledge of astronomy threads and adapters. The response from them was not the part number for the part that, as it turns out, Pegasus Astro makes for the purpose. The person who responded on the support email suggested a different adapter that stepped the rear cel down to 2”, then another adapter back up to 54mm for the camera.

Both of these, and most other, experiences I’ve had with support from vendors in the last several years have been like this. The thing that I think is worse than no advice is wrong advice, or at least not well thought advice. I remember some years ago getting a response something like “Hmm, I don’t know. I’ll email Jim and get back to you.” You don’t get that these days.

It really disappoints me how poor customer support is in the market today. Fortunately when I started out in this hobby good quality help and advice from various vendors was the norm. Lately it seems all but gone. Until I ran into George Karantzalos at Pegasus Astro.

I emailed Pegasus Astro’s(PA) support email with my query about the adapter I needed. I explained all of the adapters that came with the microfocuser and included pictures and measurements of both the  back of the C14 as well as an adapter that had been used on our scope in the past that stepped the rear cel down to 2”. This was a copy and paste of the same information I sent to the aforementioned vendor. George got back to me the next day and said he believed that PA had a part that would work but he wasn’t sure. His solution was to borrow a C14 black tube that belonged to a friend, he had spoken to that friend and it was okay, and make sure that everything would work the way he thought it would. And that’s what he did. The next day. Then he sent me a picture with the adapter on his friend’s scope.

I have a lot of good things to say about Pegasus Astro even before this interaction. But George Karantzalos at Pegasus Astro has proven that their customer support is as solid as their engineering. I told George this, but I thought I ought to tell you too. That is far beyond what I could hope for as customer support. Cheers to George!

I’m still trying to get a Pegasus Astro Prodigy Microfocuser mounted on a Celestron black tube C14. Pegasus Astro is helping me out, going so far as to borrow a C-14 to figure out what will work for me.

Just in case they don’t have anything for me, and that sounds like a possibility, I have an idea that might work. So far I bought a Pegasus Astro (PA) Large SCT 3.3” rear cell female to 68mm X 1 Male adapter. This seems to be a camera end adapter and will not connect to the scope end of the focuser. I also have a “Pegasus Astro Prodigy Microfocuser mounted Adapter for GSO 8” Ritchey-Chretien” telescope. This adapter fits in the scope end of the focuser and has the appropriate holes tapped to mount use this adapter on the scope end of the focuser. The inside of this adapter is threaded for the GSO 8” R-C visual back.

If PA doesn’t make an adapter that will work for me I’m considering contracting Precise Parts to make me an adapter with a 68mm female and the GSO visual back thread male. I just don’t know what that thread size is. So if you have a GSO 8” R-C and know that thread size, I beg of ye, please tell me what it is. I really want to be done with this problem.