Posts Made By: Paul Maxson

Bob Schnitzer said:

I'll be replacing my 25-year old 10" classical cassegrain this summer with a Royce planet killer 16" f18 class. cass. Conical mirror, totally open design, aluminum square-tube lower truss and carbon fiber upper truss. This will be one rock solid OTA. I'll keep you posted on installation and first light.

Roy Goh said:

Full moon last evening, rising at 5:20PM, with clear skies in the Seattle area.
Taken with Nikon D1x + 80-200 f/2.8 + TC201 2x teleconverter.
Thanks!
- Roy

Tyler Allred said:

Here is another f/40 attempt at Saturn, using the Celestron Ultima 2000 (8") SCT and Toucam Pro 840. Seeing was maybe 6-7/10 and transparency was good. We had a split jetstream that gave Utah a break from the normal terrible seeing.
Cheers,
Tyler

jim phillips said:

I stayed up almost all night. The seeing was never great but I did get a few images. Not great but, I'll post FYI.

TMB 8" F/9
3X Barlow, Atik color camera, Registax
Seeing 7-8/10
2:32- 2:35 AM EST (7:32- 7:35 UT) March 6, 2005.

Jim Phillips

Jeff Green said:

Hello,

I am still very new to imaging, but starting to get a handle on it.
Anyway, I took some images of Saturn over the weekend. I was doing some basic processing and almost cloned out "that nasty spot" until I realized that it was MOVING in successive frames. I checked SkyView Cafe to see what moons were where and none were crossing the planet. So, either SVC is off or it is more likely a shadow of a moon . . the question is, which moon? All help is appreciated! My guess is either Enceladus or Dione.

Thanks!
Jeff Green

Dennis Persyk said:

Comet 9P/Temple1 passed within about 13 arc minutes of spiral galaxy NGC 5162 on March 6th. Paparazzi that I am, I couldn’t pass up the photo op. Image and supporting data at
http://home.att.net/~dpersyk/new.htm

Comet and galaxy were both about magnitude 12.5, making for a nice match.

Thank you for visiting my site.

Clear skies,

Dennis Persyk
Igloo Observatory Home Page http://dpersyk.home.att.net
Hampshire, IL

Paul Kammueller said:

I was wondering if anyone else had done this. Seen ads for cooool telescopes at an impressionable age, and spent time dreaming "boy if I had that..." without any hope of ever assembling enough money to do so?

As a 12-year-old I remember dreaming of a big orange Celestron C-14, but at $5,280 it wasn't gonna happen.

A few years later in high school I read an article in Astronomy where somebody optimized a 6" f/8 newt for planetary viewing and that became a model for my next 'dream scope', a 10" f/8 newt that I finally built 15-20 years later.

I never did get a C-14. But I have been working on a 16" cassegrain (anybody know where I can get a can of 'Celestron Orange' paint? )

C'mon, what were your 'dream scopes' and did you ever realize them?