Laying Low

I took the weekend off for Thanksgiving and am back with some sort of throat cold. I'm going to lay low today and hopefully get a few new posts tomorrow.

Be well!

Happy Thanksgiving to All

Happy Thanksgiving to All - go spot a nebula after dinner!

Mount Material

During a visit to my folks' yesterday my Dad told me about an alternative material for my mount rather than PVC or steel. It's some kind of metal and I can't remember what he called it...

Business

I checked out the Small Business Administration's web site and discovered how much I don't know about starting a business. I need to take some online courses they offer for free to educate myself on what I need to know so I can reduce the risk of failure.

My favorite teacher at Holy Family University told us that the two biggest reasons small businesses fail are (1) insufficient funding and (2) lack of entrepreneurial skills.

If I at least gain the skills I need to succeed maybe I'll close the gap filled with risk.

Crazy Idear

What about opening a telescope shop?

Nothing to do with Astronomy

This has nothing to do with Astronomy but affects everyone who works in the U.S. I'm out looking for work and decided to look at elance.com which you bid on a job and the low bid wins the contract.

All of the bidders from India are bidding on jobs at $2.00, $3.00, and $5.00 an hour. It's no wonder we're all getting booted from jobs to overseas workers.

Stretched Out

While collimating the optics of my 5" Newtonian I am not able to view the brackets that hold the primary mirror in. Since the edge of the mirror is where your image is reflected from this is a problem.

Yesterday I decided to rig up a wooden frame behind the existing mirror mount in order to stretch out the optics and bring the focuser closer to the secondary mirror. Other than some minor grinding left, I was able to complete this and just tried out the new configuration.

So far so good. It seems like I'm looking through a slight haze but I think it may be that the hole to see the image off the secondary mirror is a bit off center making the wood of the focuser mount obstruct the view. I'm going to remove the focuser again and grind the hold to make it bigger to create an unobstructed view.

I need to clean the primary mirror again but I suspect I will purchase another since I scratched the surface when I tried to carelessly wipe it with a dry napkin. This put a nasty scratch in the surface and I'm not sure but think it's giving me a slightly washed out view.

Thomas M. Back - TMB Optical

I'm pretty late with this post since I just found out about it but the founder of TMB Optical died suddenly on September 13, 2007. I can't believe it since the guy was only 50.

His company made the best apochromatic refractor telescopes anyone in the U.S. had to offer. He ground his first 6-inch f/8 mirror while a teenager and never looked back.

His products range from 80mm f/6 priced at $2,190 all the way through 533mm f/13 (special order). The 533mm works out to be 20.984 inches in diameter with an optical tube length around 272.795 inches or 22.732 feet long.

Although they are not cheap telescopes, the quality is beyond words. They will continue to sell the products for the foreseeable future.

Observing with Binos

I think it's a sign - my bro-in-law and I were talking about observing with only binos and then the stardate.org program talked about observing without a telescope using just your eyes and some binos.

This last Stella-Dela Valley trip I was star hopping with my binos just sitting in my chair enjoying a glass of wine. It was really comfy not horsing around a big scope or standing for lengths of time.

If you want a quick and convenient way to observe, simply take your favorite lawn chair and beverage, lean back and enjoy a quiet night of star hunting with a lightweight set of binos.

Another great moon view

I need to start taking some digital photos of the moon and posting them here when I see a good view. This morning when I was taking Josh out for his morning squirt most of the moon was covered by the Earth's shadow but you could still see the entire moon. Too cool.

Thready Issue

My PVC mount is grinding threads under the unbalanced weight of the 5 inch home built tube. I'm going to end up beating up the paint on the mount to get the threads loose and then I'll Vaseline them all up to combat the friction problem.

The Great Nagler

I was perusing the skiesunlimited.net website and spotted the Televue eyepieces so I was reading the specs about them. The Naglers are just spectacular with their 82 degree field of view. At $282 on sale since they're selling this other new eyepiece called the "Ethos", you can maybe squeeze one out of your birthday or Christmas budget.



The type 6, seven-elements eyepieces are available in 13, 11, 9, 7, 5, 3.5, and 2.5mm. I figure buying 2 of these eyepieces a year isn't that's high tech in budgeting "fun".

Moon

Last night was a super tripped out view of the moon. It was something around 3/4 size with a huge hallow stretched way out from it. Too cool. I should have taken out my telescope for a better view but it was too late I was was beat.

New Scope Pictures

Check out the new scope pictures out here:

http://www.outerblogs.com/scope/index.html

New scope project

I was able to get the new scope out on the annual October trip with astrobuddies Frank and Mark. I discovered a few opportunities to tweak the design of both the mount and OTA.

The mount was wobbly as if it were mounted on the deck of a ship during bad seas. Here are some thoughts on why:

• PVC rather than steel construction
• tube not properly counter weighted (number 1 reason!)

Also, I have the distance from primary to secondary a little too short. When collimating the optics you can't completely see the edges of the primary mirror. I need to extend the tube to bring the focuser closer to the secondary.

The few good views of Jupiter were awesome. I was very pleased with the overal optics and can't wait to get things squared away with these minor mods.

BMAA site

I made the BMAA (BuxMont Astro Association) a free website to replace their old style but they don't seem interested. I just thought they'd like a jazzed up version (See here: http://www.outerblogs.com/bma2) but no one wrote back saying they'd take it.