Posts Made By: Leif Edmondson

Thank you all for your contributions, ideas and suggestions.
I joined the Boise Astronomy Society this year and I'm still looking for opportunities to get some views through different refractors. I'll check out the club's televue pronto. Hopefully I'll run into an AT1010 at a local event. The Craters of the Moon star party is coming up and so is the Idaho Star Party. I don't think I'm going to make it to Table Mountain this year, but maybe next.
The last contribution to this thread, by Barry Simon realy helped as it showed an image with "aberation" in it. I also never realized how much of a difference the filters made.

Sounds like a fast achro will make a great finder on my bigger dob and perform well as a quick look scope. If I was choosing a refractor as my main scope I'd be looking at the 4" to 6" f/9 and up designs but that is not the main purpose of this scope.

My dad and I built a 10" f6 dob in 1982. I used it numerous times in washington state, including driving up onto Mount Raineer on icy roads, and to a desert mountain top in eastern washington over very bumpy washboard roads. I finally moved it over to Idaho in 2002 and began using it. My dad and I 'collimated it' if you can call it that, at some point when we finished building it in 82. It worked great the whole time. I rebuilt the scope in 2002 and again I just eye-balled it into place when I remounted the optics. Just a couple of weeks ago my buddy helped me collimate it with his laser collimator, but honestly I can't tell a difference in the image after the fact. If you're doing visual observations only, my experience has been it really hasn't been that big a deal or that important. But my mirror cell is solid aluminium and very stable. And I get very nice views. Even though I've had this telescope a long time I've only begun to get back into astronomy after a long hiatus and so you'll have to take my opions and comments with that expereince level in mind.

so from my limited experience:
1. every few years or so
2. by eye, about an hour, usually less; with my buddies laser unit, about 5 minutes
3. Mine holds for years, I recollimate when I take the cell out of the tube and put it back in.

I'll second the motion for a trip to Home Despot! Here in Idaho anyway, they carry 2'x 4' (and larger) sheets of birch plywood that has very few voids and about 11 layers of wood - very close to an applyply look. Technically this is HVSC (hard veneer, soft core) but it really finishes very well, is PLENTY strong enough for a Dob Base and is cheaper than baltic birch or applyply.

I know this because I was on the same quest you are now,for the same reason, only about 6 to 8 months ago. My dob base is much better than the original my dad and I built in '82.

Don't be suckered in by Dave Krieg's "only the most expensive will do" attitude. (Don't get me wrong, I appreciate Mr. Kreig's engineering and designs but he has expensive tastes) I believe John Dobson said "build them out of junk so you can repair them with junk". Somewhere between these two extremes are an awful lot of very good telescopes.

All the lumber yards in Boise had never heard of Applyply and only one can get Baltic Birch in 5'x5' sheets. There are a couple of stores that sell it in 30"x24" sheets at just STUPID prices. Rockler's prices weren't bad.

In this report and the last I read that you have had trouble with the alt/az motions of your scope.

This weekend I was at the Craters of the Moon star party in Idaho. I own a 10" f6 and at this event I tried a Starmaster 10" f6 and a Discovery 10" f6. I found the motion of the Discovery very stiff and resistant compared with mine and the Starmaster. Perhaps this is intrinsic in the design of this brand, not sure.

Thanks for the reports
Clear Skies

Hello Ken,
I just bought a Celestron ST80 off of astromart a couple of weeks ago and I also bought a Celstron Ultima 35mm EP. which gives me about 11 power. I also own a set of Oberwerk 11x70's. The 11x70s are tough to use without a tripod. but once mounted they are fun, the field of view is wider than my scope. but my scope can "power up" with different EP's. this is more important to me now than before.

anything more powerful than 10x in binos and you'll probably want a tripod, the other advantage of the tripod is that once you've found something you can share it with others around you that don't know the sky as well as you do. I had this problem with my nieces and nephews, I'd find something cool in the sky but they were so inexperienced that they couldn't figure out what I was looking at (no green laser either).

I will say that the skies around sagitarius are LOTS of fun with Binos' though. thats why I bought mine. when paired with my 10" telescope my binos are my ultimate finders - faster, easier to point and look and then swing my big gun around and home in on what I've found. I haven't done this same test with the ST80 yet but will this summer. I think I'll wind up selling my binos afterwards. The ST80 gets better crispness than my oberwerks do in the couple of tests I've done so far.

In the amature space about the only practical designs I see out there are binoculars - two primaries, two secondaries. check out Bruce Sayre's stuff at http://www.foothill.net/~sayre/index.htm, he's a real engineer and has a bino 22" that looks really cool.

Steve Swayze also built a 12.5" bino system. JMI inc sells a 6", 10" and then some crazy big stuff commercially.

Thanks for all the replys.
Nice Web site Peter. I found some more useful informtion on it.

I thought about it. I'd say it's pretty bold of them. Did you see how tall it is?
Did you see how heavy it is? these will not likely travel much. Unless someone is considering an observatory placement I'd be surprised if these sell at all.
I think Webster's F3.6 scopes are much more practical for "large" & "portable".
And did you see the price? Orion sure is proud of these, a .9m for $50K and $80K for a 1m. wow, outa my league. But their management must think there's a market for them though. I hope they sell some.

Clear Skies
Leif