Posts Made By: Joseph Babendreier

Wow, three guys willing to help. I'm amazed. Thanks.

I'll send a picture. But I feel a bit embarrassed by the whole thing. Except for the mirrors, it's made out of junk. I had to make it up as I was going along, depending on what kind of junk was available.

(I'll send the pix tomorrow.)

My main question is about the mechanics.

I'm not entirely sure what should come first--aligning the secondary with the primary or aligning the secondary with the focuser.

I assume it should be aligning the secondary with the primary, so that the center of the secondary is exactly positioned above the center of the primary.

The few websites I saw on the net describing dob construction assume it's easy to align primary and secondary. But I can't get a tube for the OTA, so it's hard to make this alignment exact. I just don't know how exact it has to be.

Using the scope as currently assembled, I can see the moon with fairly good resolution. But Venus has this glare around it which makes it hard to see the phase.

I bought the mirrors (prim & sec) in the US. The 10" primary FL = 44 inches. Both mirrors are in excellent condition.

In case this is of any use, I'm an American living in Kenya. I get back the US only once every couple of years. I am a Catholic priest. But I did engineering before becoming a priest (B.S.E.Chem).

And BTW, I am amazed to have three people answer so quickly to my initial post. Many thanks. I was wondering how you would take this, since I see most people in Astromart are in a different league. I can't afford an expensive scope. I got my two mirrors for $109 in DC from some lady whose was getting rid of junk in the attic.

As you can imagine, I'm mostly interested in just looking up at the sky. Building this scope was the way I thought I might be able to do that.

I am grateful for the advice about wires--and all the other advice. I'll have to experiment a little to see what I can do.

As far as anyone sending me anything, I have no idea what I would need. I bought a starter set of eyepieces for $50 from somebody at Astromart and I'll wait till they come. Perhaps that is best for now.

But I am sincerely grateful for all your offers and comments.

To be honest, the most precious commodity is always time. Hard to get enough of that, isn't it?

Cheers,
Joe

Alex said something about Mars:

(PS.....the moon is still not as big as Mars in August.)

Do you mean we'll have a good view of Mars this coming August?

Joe

That's really great -- what you're doing!!! Keep up the good work.

Did you make that picture yourself?

I really liked it. Thanks for posting.

Cheers,
Joe

Many thanks for posting this.

The resolution is fabulous!

CSDTD,
Joe

Franck Malein said:

Hello every body,
So after long time with out any visit in this nice forum, I come back with this image of M109 done with the ccd 314L+ Atik ! There is 24 exposures of 300s in Luminance:

Inverse version:

I'm relatively new to Amart. I wanted to see the photo. But if I go to:

http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/6984/m109aa1sdiris3cs52final.png

I am blocked from entering the site.

Clear skies dusk to dawn,
Joe

Loved it. Thanks for posting it.

A question BTW:

The sketch is one you made not by directly observing thru an EP but by observing M83 on a hook up from your scope to a camera device. Right?

Clear skies dusk to dawn,
Joe

Thomas K O'Byrne said:

You got to go to the Hubble site and look at their latest release of Andromada images!!! Unfortunatly for me it is like looking through a window rather then at a window. I will get around to looking at the subject matter of the images later. There are thousands of galaxys hidden behind it!!! Thousands!!!
It's like the Hubble deep field back there!
tom

Thanks. I'll check it out.

James Trame said:

http://www.spacedev.com/space_exploration.php

This link to Sierra Nevada does a much better job than I can in explaining this program.

Thanks for posting this, Jim.

Cleers,
Joe