Posts Made By: Ron Sowers

Hi all, Does anyone know of a website that shows plans for making a nice metal thin vane spider? I've seached and keep coming up with curved spiders or those little "secondary on a stick" ones haha. I have a thick plastic 3 vein on my Discovery 6 inch Newt. Years ago I saw plans SOMEWHERE on how to make one from that thin metal strapping material. Thanks in advance! RonS

Hey all, Well it was ALMOST finished tonight, but dang it, I somehow after filing and finishing the vanes they ended up a tad too short! ARG! haha Soooo, tomorrow I make NEW vanes! Rats! haha Everything else is done though, all holes drilled, taps, screws filed etc. So hopefully tomorrow I can post a pic of the new and improved and better tasting spider. ha! Ron

I have a quick question, I'm on a webtv unit, when I post pictures with the upload/vid cap on other forums my pic shows up as a JPEG, when I try on here it says "wrong image type, jpeg only" any ideas? Thanks, Ron

Hey all, I asked a while ago about the threads on a camcorder, I think someone said they were 42mm? Well I looked locally EVERYWHERE and can't find anything that is that size. What I'm trying to do is just have like a thread on extention tube that will go over the eyepiece then I could put set screws to hold it to the eyepeice to keep the FOV constant, I think this in combo with the steady pix camera mount would let me do some afocal camcorder imaging. It's just so tough to keep the camcorder centered when adjusting! Thanks for any info! Ron

This question is in reguards to afocal photography. I'm posting it here as it looks like both the photography forums are just "picture posting" places now? Ok, here's the question. All you people who are getting these cool images of Jupiter and Saturn, and are using digital and webcams afocal, if you pop the camera off, what is the magnification your at with your scope/eyepeice that gives you good results? Do you go for max or less? Any focusing tricks? Thanks!!! Ron

Hey everyone, Question: How do you figure the F number when using eyepiece projection? I have been "trying" to get planetary images, they never turn out good. Images are usually pretty pixelated. I read in S&T that I should be between F2O and F3O, is that correct? My scope is a 6 inch F5 reflector. I'm using a digital camera. I have been using a 2x barlow and a 5.5mm eyepiece, the camera lense is about 1CM from the eyepiece. When I upload the pictures to the PC, the planets look pretty small, but not sure how big or small they are image scale-wise for you guys who are getting all these awesome images! Thanks for any help! Ron

Hi all,

I have a question for anyone who has, or has looked through a c5 or c102 refractor.
I have a 6inch F5 newt, the attatched image represents what Jupiter looks like through the eyepiece. This is about the best I see it, even with perfect collimation etc. I have a small budget but would love to see more detail. WOULD a Celestron 5 inch SCT or a 4 inch Achro refractor look better for planetary detail?
Thanks in advance for any help. :-)
Ron

Hi Folks, If you remember, I asked about a week ago about planetary images, ppl asked about the start test on my scope. To refresh everyones memory, it's a 6 inch Discovery F5 EQ newt. Astro-sital primary. OK, last night we had some really steady skies and I got to do the star test. Also this morning I did a false star test on a small ball bearing I placed far away. Im not sure how to take the results, I've heard that long as intra and extra tests look the same, then the mirror must be good. I guess before I had really poor seeing conditons as I could not get decent rings on the star test. This time however, I could. Both sides of focus looked identical except one side was a bit "spikier". When the star was IN focus at high power I had the little round star with a couple faint rings around it also. I downloaded the program "aberator" and when I type in the specifics of my scope it shows what the star test SHOULD look like. It shows more of just a brightening around the white dot as opposed to round rings. If I change the aberations to simulate spherical defects, then extra focal looks like BOTH sides of focus look for me, but it shows intra as looking differnt. I tried to photo the star test but couldn't get the camera to pick it up right. So I edited one of the samples in the Aberator to look like my test looks. Both sides of focus look just like (except add the spikey-ness thing and the follow info.} this attatched image, except for one issue... The other issue that may explain why maybe my planetary veiws are sub-par is that when looking at the star test, I see lot's of what look like small water spots all super imposed in front of the image! It's not my eye or the eyepeices as I tried them on our little ETX90 and they are not there. If you move your eye around they move around too. Rotating the eyepeice has no effect. Could it be a rough secondary? The mirrors are clean, I tried that! Really weird!

I've always been facinated by this scope as a planetary scope, I saw the ads in the mags about the good sale on them now, if anyone owns one I'd love to know how they are
1) optically
2) how good does the autostar work?

Good points?
Annoying points?

Thanks!
Ron

Hey folks,

Some of you might remember a few weeks ago I posted an example of how Jupiter looks visually in our scope. To refresh, our scope is a 6 inch F5 Discovery EQ reflector.
I tried the advice, I collimated it TO DEATH last night, I mean SPOT ON. I also let is cool for 2 hours first, it really did help, I was able to look at Jupiter at 272X it still didn't look like a mag photo, but much better. Now, my new questions are this, in the attatched image here you will see an example of how it looks now. This is after very careful collimation and cleaing of all optics and eyepeices, does THIS look like what I should see in the type of scope we have?
Also, the lower image is how I'd like to see it, if anyone has seen it this good or better, please just at least say what type of scope you saw it that good in. I would love to get another scope (who doesn't always want just ONE more ha) and not sure if a 10 inch dob, or ????? Do large dobs show good detail on planets? I'm sure EXPENSIVE ones with Zambuto (sp?) optics do, but how about Orion XT series? This way I could get more deep sky too!
Or how about Orions 5inch Mak? Celestron 4inch Achro?
Anyone looked at Jupiter in these?

Sorry for all the questions, I just don't want to make ANOTHER mistake like I did getting the ETX90.

Thanks to anyone who answers!
Ron