Posts Made By: Leslie Hess

Thanks for the advice and help which guided me to making this fine 10" dob.

Being new to astrnomy I have had a great deal of trouble estimating the angle my scope is positioned from zeneth. I found an anglefinder at the tool stoer and rounded it off, then mounted it to the dob bearing. It works great... Here is a pic.

leslie

This should be a fun forum focused on the art of telescope making. There are some very large egos here, some ill will is fealt even in the telescope making forum.

I thought the religion and politics section was bad and vowed never to step into that place again because of personal insults thrown about freely just because people dissagree.

Now I sence this is spilling over into this forum and that is sad. Truly a loss to all.

LH

I have seen off axis filters advertised and am curious about the pros and cons. I have a home made 10 inch dob and finding a filter large enough to fit the 12.25 inch tube will be cost prohibative for me, however I could construct a housing to fit the tube and incorporate a smaller filter off axis at an affordable price.

Is this doable and would the performance be acceptable?

What size off axis filter would be needed for a 10 inch mirror? I have in my head that a 4inch diameter filter would be adequate.......

Thanks.

Leslie

Hello, I guess I am new to the birding forum. I have looked at many posts here but this is my first post.

Today I had my first day of attempted birding in my back yard with my 10 inch home made Dob. I took many shots of objects but the birds were not cooperating. Finally at the end of the day a Finch landed about 75 yards away. Bingo I got a few shots!! here is the best shot. Taken using a f4.5 10" Dob, 32mm Russell eyepiece and University optics 2x barlow. My cam is a Cannon Digital Elph.

What do you guys think??

Leslie

Hello!

I have tried several software packages to help me find coordinates of ngc and messier objects, all seem to have major shortcomings. I hope I have been looking in all the wrong places....

For example. Winstars is as close to what I want as any. It clearly shows direction, is clearly labeled in degrees from zeneth and double clicks will show details about the objects. However, most of the really nice deepspace objects like m57 are not even labeled for easy tracking. This seems like a major shortcoming for this software. I cannot imagine why the makers would leave out the best objects but appearently they did..

I tried Starry Nights. Well this just doesent help much for quickly finding coordinates from zenith like I need for my Dob.. Coeli software is much the same in not clearly labeling angles from zenithand finding coords is cumbersome.

Maybe I just haven't found the right software? I am hopeful anyway. Does anyone know of some software which clearly labels and tracks all messier objects, ngc, planets, with clearly labeled elevation and directional indications??

Any help here would be just super!!

Thanks,
leslie

One of the first things I observed using my home made Dob was a satellite passing my fov at dusk and I managed then to track it for maybe 2 good seconds, centered perfectly in my eyepiece.

I have now began coming home from a long days work, setting up my scope and looking for contrails. When I see one I locate it, follow it to the jet and BAM! My 2 inch eyepieces' fov can get simply an amazing image.

My dob is on the heavy side, about 50 pounds, and it seems real solid while tracking manually.

Does anyone else enjoy this type thing or am I just strange? lol

Leslie

I have searched the web over and can not locate a good quality large printable protractor. Perhaps one of you fine folks happen to know where I could find one?

Thanks
Leslie

Hello Gazers!

I am having a hard time getting my 10 inch f 4.5's optics set up perfectly. Rather then hashing out the details in the discussion forum I would like to gather more info from some tutorials availble on the web.

Could you folks please point me to some links so I can compare methods.

Much thanks,

Leslie

I found this website which will give you your exact coordinates if you need them. http://www.geocode.com/index.php

Have a great day!

Leslie