Posts Made By: Philip Blanda

I read on another forum that over 17,000 units the Celestron SkyScout have been sold to date! WOW! Home run for Celestron on this baby. I wonder the experience level of the buyers? I would suspect that this is a great device for introducing people to the sky and getting them "into" the hobby.

Philip

http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/070329/20070329005210.html?.v=1

Thanks to PeteH on CN for clueing me into this.

Philip

I use Baader Mk. V binoviewer with my scopes. Some of the advantages as I saw them when I choose it over the Denk II:

1) Optical & mechanical quality. While I have not done any comparison tests and didn't want to have to do them, I certainly believe that the optical quality of the prisms and beam spliiter as well as the robostness of the internal alignment is second to none. I wanted top quality optics to go with my top quality scopes. Are some other binoviewers just as good? I do not know, but it is certainly possible (or even likely?).

2) Optical design. The glasspath correctors available for the Baader corrects for "the slight color error and spherical aberration that a prism beam splitter naturally introduces into the light path of all binocular viewers." It was also designed by Roland Christen so I felt confident that it did what it says it does. Additionally, the prisms in the Baader are very large and will provide the most illumination of edges of 24mm Pans for wide field views.

3) Optical quality of accessories in the chain. As part of a high quality optical chain, I wanted to use only top flight optics. For barlow power I use an AP 2" Barcon and could use other top shelf optics (e.g. the Baader Fluorite Flatfield Converter or TV Powermates). I did not feel confident that the quality of the lenses used in the various power switches were necessarily up to snuff. Additionally if I felt I didn't like how the 2" Barcon was performing, I could easily switch it out for something else while in the powerswitch I'm stuck with what's in there.

The Baader Mk.V come with a high quality T-2 prism diagonal and I also use (now mostly) the Baader T-2 Maxbright diagonal.

4) Comes to focus. I knew that the Baader Mk.V would come to focus in the T-2 diagonals with no corrector in place in my telescopes for the widest fields possible.

I knew I was giving up the great convenience of the Denk Power switch for the manual screwing and unscrewing of correctors and extensions in the Baader. I explicitly made that trade-off to try to insure (as best I could) that all the optical components in the chain were top quality. I admit that this is my perception but it is the reasoning I used.

Philip

So I thought I would see if I liked doing astro pics again and broke out my old 1997 SBIG ST-5C. For those of you not familiar with this camera it is a 320x240 pixel TI255 based cooled CCD camera with a built in RGB colour filter wheel.

I used this with my TEC 180FL on an AP900GTP mount. I only polar aligned quickly with the polar scope through the axis so I limited myself to 15 second exposures. I took sky flats and had the camera apply the darks automatically. The pic is an LRGB with 72x15sec L (18 minutes total), and 36x15sec RGB (9 minutes each total).

It was processed by Maxim DL and Photoshop. I forgot how much fun imaging is. Perhaps a new camera is in store for me?

I was a bit hesitant to post my first attempt at deep sky imaging in 8 years as so many of the images here are just first rate, but what the heck?

Philip

Is there a general rule of thumb on using LR deconvolution on LRGB images? Should one deconvolve the individual components before color combine, or after? I tried it both ways and like the after better, but didn't fool around with it too much.

Philip

In Hope, NJ. The clear sky clock finally looking good, I'll be there with my son. He'll have his mighty Orion XT4.5 and I'll have my TEC 180FL. Yippie!

Philip

Roland piqued my curiosity when he mentioned the performance of the Meade RCX 10"/12" scopes.

Astrophotographically speaking, what could the 10"/12" Meade RCX's do that my old AP 160EDF or my current TEC 180FL couldn't do? Or the converse - what do the APO's do that the RCX's couldn't?

Philip

See here:

http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/primenewswire/130402.htm

Some important bits:

"...will transfer manufacturing and assembly of all high-end telescopes from its manufacturing operations in Irvine, California to lower cost locations. ... in Mexico or by its contract manufacturing partners in China."

"...is reducing its U.S. employee base by 60%, or approximately 120 employees. These employees consist primarily of manufacturing, selling and administrative personnel."

Philip

What you have there is an older "greased" Traveler focuser. It cannot be upgraded to the Feathertouch pinion, which is one reason you see so many of these for sale. For confirmation, look here on the AP website for pinion blocks that can and cannot be upgraded:

http://www.astro-physics.com/products/accessories/focus_adap/pinionblocks.htm

To adjust the motion of the focuser, follow these instructions:

http://www.astro-physics.com/tech_support/refractors/foc_pin_adj.pdf

Philip

Does anyone have a handy table or specific info on the actual focal lengths of SCT (specifically a C9.25) in different configurations? I'm specifically interested in the focal length of a C9.25 when a toucam is attached straight through. Since this setup makes little sense except in a specific cicumstance, a CCD camera attached with no filters is a good stand-in. This is to help someone out.

Thanks,

Philip