All in all, the Astro-Physics segment of Made in America is an excellent representation of their visit with us in October of last year. We were very pleased with entire experience. John Ratzenberger, the production staff on location and the producers back in their main office were wonderful to work with. It must have been a real challenge to distill a day’s worth of film into a presentation of approximately 9 minutes. There are just a few details that should be corrected or have elicited questions. I have addressed some of them here:
John Ratzenberger is adjusting his hair in the mirror of the 10” Mak-Cas.
Astronomical photos shown in relationship to Jane, the juvenile T.rex - Yes, Stefan’s Quintet is about 300 million light years away, considerably older than Jane’s estimated 66 million years. M100 is a closer match at 60-70 million light years away.
Andromeda image - Okay, so Andromeda is now considered to be about 2.5 million light years away. Did you know that off the top of your head?
The explanation of the image was truncated and the 10” Mak-Cas should have appeared on the screen rather than the refractor, as one of the instruments that took it. This image was actually taken with three Astro-Physics telescopes by astro-imagers Roland Christen, Trent Kjell and Mark Jenkins using these scopes: 10” Maksutov-Cassegrain , 180mm f4.1 Maksutov-Newtonian and a 235mm f4.3 Maksutov-Newtonian (the Mak-Newts were prototype scopes). The CCD images were stacked and stitched together taking best advantage of the field and resolution of each instrument. For instance, the 10” Mak-Cas was used to take the core of Andromeda (the detail is amazing), while the wider field instruments captured the arms of the galaxy. The image can be seen in the Gallery of our website.
If you would like to purchase this photo (the one in our showroom measures about 30”x 48”) contact Mark Jenkins at
[email protected] .Smaller sizes may be available. There is also an awesome photo of the Orion nebula.
Beeping keypad with the yellow keypad protector - The sound effects people took some artistic license and added the beeps for the individual button pushes. The keypad does not do that. It would drive us all nuts. The yellow protector is an alternate color that was (and might still be) available. Since Wally’s keypad is distinctive, he can be assured that it won’t walk away to another department unnoticed.
Synchronous motor - Unfortunately, they did not choose the footage of our current servo motors in this shot, but that’s the luck of the draw. The motors that were shown are from very old mounts that we produced years ago. We still maintain a stock of parts for repair.
Testing of the mounts - Wally showed how he tests with the ammeter (how much current the motor is pulling, an indication of gears in too tight a mesh or parts out of tolerance), however we did not disclose how we test the periodic error of each mount. That is confidential information that we chose not to disclose. The test apparatus was removed from the area so that is would not be filmed.
Green glass - The green glass is a test plate for one of the lens elements of the 160. It is not a part of the lens itself.
Test plates - When John discusses test plates, a spherometer is shown measuring the basic curve of the lens element. Test plates are more accurate and are used later in the process. They did shoot some nice footage showing how test plates and the interferometer are used, but it ended up on the cutting room floor.
Final assembly of the lens - In the voiceover, John mentions that final assembly of the lens may take five hours. Although Roland explains that the lens must be free of dust, that is a minor aspect of the five hour assembly time. Most of the time is spent adjusting the six spacers between the three lens elements. These are carefully adjusted to very tight tolerances by removing material (essentially polishing it off) from one spacer at a time to an accuracy of .00005” (.001mm). During this process, the lens is tested again and again on the interferometer. The end result is a lens that is perfectly collimated and stays in collimation. There are no adjustments needed by the customer ever. Contrast this with other less expensive air-spaced triplets that may require adjustment in the field with screws. Precise adjustment would not be possible.
Alien speck - The 160 StarFire EDF has a filter made with Astro Solar filter on the front, so the lens was not harmed (neither was the filter). I suspect that the alien music was introduced to mask the traffic noise in front of our building when this scene was shot as well as embellish the “story”. I wonder what the truck drivers thought as they passed by - camera crew, Made in America trailer (and a second large trailer) and crowd of AP staff watching John cutting up at the telescope.
Marj Christen
Astro-Physics
