Posts Made By: Tom Masterson

Ok, I just picked up a Meade soft case for my 12" LX200 classic and have inserted the foam. The problems is, the foam sticks up about 2 inches past the zipper on each side so its impossible to zip the case closed. Is there a trick to fitting the foam? Does some have to be sliced off?

Thanks.

Tom

Despite some software problems I was able to capture a couple shots of yesterday's flame-like proms.

Enjoy.

Solar minimum you think?

Its been quiet here for a while and I haven't seen the Sun since who-knows when, but I DO have something to post that may be interesting to other PST owners.

My SPT-Cubed!

Before the holidays I saw an ad in one of the stronomy magzines for a new mount - "The Cube" My wife was still bugging me to give her my Christmas gift list, so I added this to it. It looked like a perfect match to the PST and might make a great travel mount for my two little solar scopes.

The mount arrived and I set it up but lacked one piece to be able to attach the PST to the mount - an "L" bracket. A little aluminum, a few holes and some stick-on felt later and the PST is mounted!

Non-stop, cloudy, Pacific NorthWet weather has prevented me from doing a field test of the mount, but it sure looks like its a perfect match to the PST. Soon, I hope to post a full "review" of the mount and how it performs with the PST. Until then, here's a few pictures of the set-up.

For the past couple years I've been using a modified ETX mount which has worked well.


Now, on the new Cube mount:




And the adapter:

Hi, Dave.

Don't worry about age when considering purchasing a mirror. The glass doesn't wear out even though coatings do. You shouldn't need to have the mirror refigured unless it was bad in the first place. The surface figure will remain unchanged long after we are all dead and even some scratching will not effect the views. Most coatings have a life time of around 10 years or better depending on how they were treated, stored and the local atmosphere. You didn't say what size the scope is but here's is a link to a place that does a great job at re-coating mirrors - http://www.spectrum-coatings.com/ Unless the mirror was abused by overcleaning or repeatedly covered while dewed over, a five year old coating should have lots of years left. I live in a very humid area - the Pacific Northwest - and I got a good 15 years out of my mirror before recoating.

Obsessions have a very good reputation and if the over all condition of the scope is good, a recoat is a small price to pay for making optics perform like new. Think of coatings like tires on a car. Worn tires have "some" impact on the price of a car but shouldn't be a deal breaker if the car is in good shape and the price reflects the need for new tires.

It took me a while to figure out what that big bright thing was in the sky. Once I realized it was the Sun, I dusted off my PSTs and imager and snapped a couple shots.

There was one active region on an otherwise blank solar disk.

I don't do much lunar photography but Saturday morning I was imaging the Lunax X with my 12" LX 200. Just after putting the camera away I decided to look at the Moon through my piggybacked Brandon 94 apo and a 40mm Widefield eyepiece. To my surprise, there was Mars glowing off to the lower right of the Moon! Out came the imager and and I grabbed some AVIs of the event. Stitched them together in Photoshop - placing Mars closer to the Moon so the image size wouldn't have to be too large.

I have a question for those of you who had their PSTs repaired. Did you notice a change in its performance after getting it repaired? If so, could you describe the change? Do you feels its performs the same, better, or worse than before. Please start by describing the problem that caused you to get it repaired. I'll start first.

PST Ha:
Sent in to Meade for the ubiquitous Objective "Rust" a year and a half ago.

The repaired scope has a brighter image and "may" have a little less contrast on the solar disk than before the repair. Believe it or not, I still can't say if it "performs" better or worse than before the repair. The original scope had a large sweet spot covering the entire solar disk. It still has a large sweet spot that appears a little smaller than before - maybe not quite the entire disk. I find the brighter image allows for higher usable magnification. Why can't I decide if it’s better or worse? In part, because in the past year or so I've had other things competing for "solar time" so the fixed PST has seen less of the Sun. The bland disk of this solar minimum hasn't helped either. It's hard to judge surface contrast compared to a 2-year-old memory, especially when there's much less happening on the solar disk now! My impression is; the performance is very close to the same as before - maybe "slightly" less contrast or wider bandpass.

Next, my experience with my CaK repair.

Well, finally a weekend, clear weather, and some free time all lined up in the cosmic tumblers of life. This allowed me to snap a couple images - my first of this season.

Solar minimum is still hanging on with the Sun showing a very uniform disk. I did see a large area of activity and snapped a couple images of this area.

Here's one taken through a layer of high thin clouds.

Check out the new thread in the 99mm or less telescope forum regarding a spot on Jupiter. Anyone else see it?

It's not a moon shadow - too far south and is not the impact feature - saw that the night before I noticed this little spot. It's just inside the lighter area between the South Equitorial belt and the south "Cap". Technically I guess - in the south temperate zone.

It's in a longitude where the impact area and the Great spot aren't visible.

Tom