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Posts Made By: Rod Kaufman

April 5, 2004 09:17 PM Forum: Equipment Talk

Books on Optics

Posted By Rod Kaufman
Richard,
Telescope Optics is a manual that covers SCT, classical cassegrain systems and others. It's described on the Willman Bell website and has updated software available as well.

May 1, 2004 04:08 AM Forum: Equipment Talk

Dark Skies in Tonopah

Posted By Rod Kaufman
The June issue of Sky and Tel has an ad that caught my eye. It's an ad for dark skies available at Tonopah, Nevada. It's sponsored by the Nevada bureau of tourism and the website is: www.tonopahstartrails.com
Check-out the website as it's a good one and send kudos to the contact link for sponsoring the dark-sky effort. The dark sky site is located midway between Las Vegas and Reno at the intersection of Highways 95 and 6.
I've got to get ahold of Floyd Blue and his crew and they can ride shotgun on our way up there!

May 3, 2004 05:40 PM Forum: Equipment Talk

GSO Eyepieces

Posted By Rod Kaufman
Kerry,
I've recommended the 2" GSO barlow to others in the eyepiece forum who have since reported how well they like it. I use it to clean-up the edges on my TAL 24mm and 30mm Optik wideangle eyepieces when used in my fast dobs.
I've read some very positive comments about the 2" 40mm eyepiece when it was used in scopes of moderate to long f-ratios.
I can't say enough good things about their 2" barlow;very good light-throughput and at about $59.00 at Owl Services,it's a heck of a deal!

May 24, 2004 07:02 PM Forum: Equipment Talk

wide field eyepiece for 16" f/4.9?

Posted By Rod Kaufman
Mike,
Another option for you to consider is purchasing the low-cost 2" 2x barlow from Owl services for $59.00 and using it with the BW Optik 2" eyepiece. It cleans-up the edges of the Optik as well as the TAL 24mm 2" widefield eyepiece in my 16" F4.5 dob and the combo costs far less than premium widefield 2" eyepieces.

July 8, 2004 04:23 PM Forum: Equipment Talk

Laser Collimator Alignment

Posted By Rod Kaufman
Floyd,
From what I have read, it can be quite difficult to collimate the laser itself. I sent my Glatter laser back to Howie for a re-check on it's collimation and it was just within his specs of one arc minute and he tweaked it to better than 15 arc seconds.I have noticed as you have that several lasers in the same scope don't "agree" but I am going with my Howie Glatter laser as I have had him check it to be sure.

July 9, 2004 05:14 PM Forum: Equipment Talk

Collimation of Laser Collimators

Posted By Rod Kaufman
Nice job on your article! I had felt abit intimidated about the collimation process of a laser based upon other posts but your article delineates the process very clearly.
As I indicated in a previous post,I had sent my Glatter laser back to Howie Glatter for a re-check and it was just within his maximum allowable spec of one arc minute. He was able to tweak it to better than 15 arc seconds: it's some very fine work!

July 9, 2004 09:52 PM Forum: Equipment Talk

Meade, Celestron settle patent lawsuits

Posted By Rod Kaufman
From the LA Times,"Celestron agreed to pay Meade royalties equal to the greater of 100.00 per unit or 8% of Celestron's net revenue from telescopes that use technology developed by Meade to level the scopes and enable them to find true North".

July 21, 2004 02:00 PM Forum: Equipment Talk

Mirror re coating

Posted By Rod Kaufman
Floyd,
Good luck on the recoat.Hopefully there will be no sleeks on the new coating.Let us know when you receive it from the coater.
I think the standard coating makes more sense than the enhanced option as there's less risk for an alteration of the figure.

August 19, 2004 03:29 AM Forum: Equipment Talk

Kendrick Barlowed Lasers

Posted By Rod Kaufman
Bernie,
I don't have experience with the Kendrick barlow laser but I do use a barlow laser for collimation.
I've found that if the optical/mechanical alignment of my 16" truss dob is very good, I do not have to tweak the primary very much, if at all, when I first collimate with basic laser and re-check with the barlow laser. I do have to go up and down when I first apply the laser but I really don't need to tweak it alot when I follow-up with the barlow laser. If I bounced the scope around alot, there's a bit more tweaking that needs to occur with the barlow laser but not much.
Your mileage may vary.

August 28, 2004 01:10 AM Forum: Equipment Talk

How far will you go for dark skies?

Posted By Rod Kaufman
I typically drive one hour for magnitude 6 skies but with increasing overdevelopment in California, I suspect I will need to drive 2.5-3 hours for dark skies in a few years.

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