First, a little news. Meade has issued firmware updates for both the mount and the Starlock module, and also an updated version of the PEC editor. My router still blocks only one site (Meade) so I had to download it all at the office and drag it home. Eventually I’ll make fixing that a priority. All installed, all working fine. Bigger news is that JOC (Meade’s primary supplier of imported products for many years) proposes to buy control. The stockholders should surely approve this; it would result in a serious cash injection for Meade and ensure their survival for quite a while.
I used the PEC editor to look at the PEC data stored in the mount. It’s a little disappointing; looks like maybe 16 p-p arcseconds uncorrected PE. I’ll call Meade about that at some point. PPEC and Starlock seem to be managing that pretty well, though.
Meanwhile, another quickie test image shot through cloud openings. The Moon was up for the later exposures so had to do some equalization to keep the stars above the background light. CCDStack2 is an excellent program that handles that very well. Only 100 second exposures because I had to get some data before the clouds took over completely.
A larger and less compressed version can be seen here: http://www.cloudynights.com/photopost/showphoto.php?photo=27541&size=big