I stripped down the RA axis on the EQ-6 to see if there was anything obvious stuck in the worm gear as I’d read reports of some being filled with sticky black grease and metal shavings from the inside of the casting.

 I was pleasantly surprised to find clean white grease in my mount and after examining the worm and RA gear I was unable to find any swarf or other debris lodged in it.

A good site for instructions on how to take the mount apart is: http://www.jamesrobertcook.co.uk/RA_axis.htm the instructions are clear and each step has a photo to help you identify the correct parts.

 What these sites don’t tell you is how to put it back together again! Ok I can get all the parts in the right place, but the gear mesh is adjustable with grub screws and I’m having a little trouble getting the gears meshed without play in the axis.

I couldn’t wait until I’d fixed it though as there was a small gap in the clouds, so I had to take the opportunity to see if I could find the comet everyone is talking about – Holmes(17P). This comet suddenly changed in brightness from magnitude 17 to magnitude 2.5 in a matter of hours and is clearly visible to the naked eye just below and to the north of Mirfak.

I started by trying a one star alignment with EQMOD and when I looked through the finder the comet was there in the middle. I started imaging straight away before the clouds came back and managed 2 avi’s with 50+ frames in each.

They’re very simillar shots but the second one shows more green colour which been reported by others. The comet fills the field of view in my SPC900NC and to think I was going to get the 2x barlow out for this.

The images were both 2 second exposures with frames stacked and wavelets in Registax and finished off in Photoshop.