Tinsely 8" Cassegrain Type

Hi Folks,

Does anybody know whether the old 8" Tinsley cassegrain was a "classical" or some other variant.

Thanks !

David,
I have a book entitled "Telescopes For Skygazing" by the late Henry E Paul who lists Tinsely as a supplier of "cassegrain telescopes". It also pictures a Tinsely 24" in a dome and it appears to be a classical design but I can't be sure of it. I remember Tinsely used to advertize in Sky and Tel many years ago. Paul's book had an address for them in Berkley,California although I haven't heard about them in years. From what I've read on the net, the current Tinsely lab redid the Hubble and fixed its faulty optics with a corrector, implanted by an astronaut? They're still listed near San Francisco.

Check out this link for old Tinsley and other catalogs:

http://geogdata.csun.edu/~voltaire/classics/

Dave

David Simons said:

Hi Folks,

Does anybody know whether the old 8" Tinsley cassegrain was a "classical" or some other variant.

Thanks !

Classical is what I remember. If you care to trust MY memory. Especially of the 1960s.

8)

I owned a Tinsely 8" cassegrain that I bought when the St Louis Science center auctioned off old equipment. Bob Cox bought a pair of these scopes for the Science Center when the McDonnell Planetarium was built. When I tested the primary it was a very under-corrected parabola. I spent a lot of time on the phone with Bob about the scope and he told me that was the way it should be as the scope was a Dall-Kirkham rather than a classical Cassegrain.

Robert Provin said:

Hello David,
I happen to have a Tinsley catalog that I will soon post to my classic catalogs web site (referenced elsewhere in this thread). According to the catalog the Tinsley Cassegrains are Dall-Kirkham.

Robert 8)

At the Kopernik Space Ed Center we had a Tinsley 12.5" that had once belonged to the IBM Corp. It was always my understanding that it was a D-K. I never particularly liked the optics, or the secondary "spider", that was two circles meeting in the center of the tube. The optics needed to be re-figured. We sold the scope to someone who was interested in re-furbishing it. If it was my scope I would have had the optics re-done as a classical Cass, and I would have replaced the spider.

George N