RE: [APML] Am I nuts...

[Alan Voetsch <critter12952@yahoo.com>]

--- Jon Kolb <jkolb@datawest.net> wrote:
>Then you only have to worry about
> flexure, film creep,
> dew, kicking the mount, forgetting to open the
> shutter, mount settling
> into soft earth, clouds, airplanes, dead batteries,
> small parts dropped
> into the snow, wild animals, and a host of stupid
> astrophotographer
> tricks too numerous to list here!

Hi Jon and all,

I know we've all had some strange experiences in this
hobby. The 'wild animal' problem Jon mentioned
reminded me of a different kind of 'animal attack' I
experienced a few years ago.

My observatory is right outside the kids' bedrooms. At
that time I ran an extension cord into one of the
rooms and had it plugged in there. This supplied the
power for my scope and equipment.

I had a shot of the Crab Nebula set up, autoguider is
working fine and I'm about 30 minutes into the shot.
I'm shooting at f/10 and want at least 60-90 minutes.
Anyway, 30 minutes into the shot everything suddenly
goes dead. LX200, autoguider...everything. First
thought was 'power outage'. Stick my head out of the
observatory and can tell the rest of the house has
power, and I'm thinking 'what the ?!#***'. 

Within a few minutes, I saw the clues and figured out
what happened. My daughter had already been tucked in
for the night. Apparently she rolled over while
reading in bed. This action knocked a stuffed animal
off her bed, which hit the extension cord plug and
jiggled it enough to break the connection. This
'animal attack' scarred me for life and to this day I
have never used an inside outlet again. :-))

Our motto: "If it can go wrong, eventually it will".

Alan

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