Posts Made By: Dan Newman

Remembering our MP3 discussion of last week, this news item caught my eye,

http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/03/the-sizzling-sound-of-music.html

Briefly, a music professor at Stanford has been testing the format preferences of his
incoming students over the past 6 years. Much to his frustration, the trend appears
to be towards more students preferring MP3 over other "higher quality" formats.
There's not much in the article, btw: mostly just that one observation with a few
more details and then speculations.

Dan

I live in the Angeles National Forest in Southern California. About a mile away from my home is the California Bighorn
Sheep Preserve. Even closer is an area where a "bachelor's club" of the sheep hang out. Usually they're a bit too far up the
very sheer canyon wall for me to get good shots. But this morning five of them came all the way down to the stream
and I was able to get some good shots of them individually and in pairs. Here's one shot of one of the males.
(Nikon D80 with a 200mm lens.)

Dan

Citing http://www.ktla.com/news/landing/ktla-angeles-fire,0,5292469.story ,

Firefighters have been pulled away from Mount Wilson, where critical broadcast
towers for many television and radio stations are located, including KTLA.

And just a very short ways to the east on that ridge line is the Mt. Wilson Observatory
with its 60" refractor. Also, http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/08/station-fire-approaching-historic-mt-wilson-observatory-fire-officials-say.html


http://www.mtwilson.edu/

Judson Mitchell said:

We invariably get our good weather when the moon is bright or full. That suggests to me that somewhere else the reverse is true and they suck up all the good skies when it is dark. I want to know where that place is. There are witnesses to this.

Jud

I believe that you're seeking the dark side of the moon....

Dan Dolaptchieff said:

I am rebuilding a 24" starmaster dob GoTO. It had a set of drive motors the dec motor drive wheel looks like a toothed grinder and makes contact with the wooden dec wheel It works sort of ok.

The alt motor has a splined drive wheel. The quadrent thats driven has velcro male that is driven by the splined wheel and it likes to slip sometimes.

Im changing it to a rubber wheel on the drive wheel and a stainless strip on the quad to engage it. any ideas??

Anyone do this before.

Thanks for your help
Aloha
dan

Call Rick Singmaster of Starmaster. He's always willing to help, even if you aren't
the original owner. Sometimes slipping is caused by dirt buildup on some of the
contact surfaces and/or on some scopes there were some plastic bumbers which
could come in contact with the mirror box when dirt built up on them. There's
other causes too and he knows them all and can point you in the right directions.

Ciao,
Dan

Sean Walker said:

Hello all,name is Sean and live in Fresno Tex just a ways from Houston. My question in what in bejeezus am I doing wrong in trying to align my Celestron ASGT mount and be able to GOTO. I know I am sighting Polaris properly. I have used Solar Sytem align(Venus) and Two star align (I.E Sirius and Betelguese) and the scope tells me its now aligned for GOTO and when i punch in a target,it goes everywhere BUT to the target!!!!! HELP!! I have in the proper State,city,Latitude and time. What am i doing wrong? Is anyone else pulling out their hair trying to align their ASGT???? I have mounted on it a Meade LXD 6 inch Newtonian. I have a Orion Atlas 10 inch Newt but its just too big for the ASGT. Thanx,Deperate in Texas.

The bottom of Tony Bonanno's 2003 review of the Celestron AS-GT has several comments about obtaining accurrate GOTOs with
that mount. Quoting from his article of 2003

Apparently the importance of centering the alignment stars using the “up” and “right” direction arrows is fairly important if you wish to obtain good GOTO’s. Several users on the Yahoo Celestron_AS group report that they’ve definitely noticed improved accuracy when strictly following this routine. I’ve also noticed that the leveling of the mount using the built-in bubble level seems to help the accuracy of my GOTO’s. Typically I will setup and do a tour of 20-30 targets during an observing session. I’m finding consistently good GOTO performance (generally within the central 2/3rds of a 26mm eyepiece). There have been a couple of instances when the GOTO slews did not seem to be working properly. I suspect a software glitch rather than a hardware problem. Hitting one of the arrow keys will stop the mount and then pushing the “enter” key seems to put everything back on track without having to re-align

Note that he is considering getting good GOTO performance where the target is in the central 2/3rds of a 26mm EP. (He uses 60 and 72" FL
scopes.) So, don't necessarily expect things to land in the FOV of a 12mm EP right away. Also, he's talking about refining what is already
good GOTO. May not be relevant to your issue if you're getting absolutely out-of-the-ball-park GOTO thereby suggesting some more
serious problem (e.g., mechanical and not controller software).

So, let me ask this: if customs is the gating factor, does this mean that the delays
are carrier independent? That is, have the same loooong delays been known to
occur when the USPS and Canada Post are eliminated from the equation by using,
say, UPS or FedEx? [ Or, do they use sled dogs too? ]

Thanks,
Dan

Rex Cox said:

I just sent an order in this past week to Jim Fly for the Catseye Triplepack Pro XL collimation system. This week, he made available a new autocollimator, called the XLK, that has a second offset hole in it for tweaking the collimation to a new level of perfection.

I'm wondering if any of the collimation illuminati here have had a chance to wrap their minds around this new tool? What do you think? I'm considering upgrading my order for the new collimator. I would think that the folks with very fast Newts would likely get the most benefit from it.

After looking at the info on the Catseye website, it looks to me like it will be a great tool.

Well, I sent my 2" Infinity XL in to be modified last Thursday and got it back today. (That's California to
Alabama, Jim's shop, and then back to California.) So, fast turn around given the distance. For my $30,
I got the offset pupil added as well as a cleaning. In the return package, Jim included another set of
XL directions, another Allen wrench, another spare set screw, and a brand spanking new set of XLK
instructions. (I figure I got the accessories again because it's simply saner for Jim to *always* include
them rather than try to remember who gets them and who doesn't and then having to deal with any
mistakes.)

Next clear night, I'll give the XLK a whirl and see what I think. I'm confident in my collimation skills
but am interested to see what the offset pupil will reveal. Besides, it's another thing to fiddle with while
I'm waiting for a cloud to clear, the scope to cool, or whatever. And, since most folks don't yet know
about the offset pupil idea, I can always spin some yarns about the extra hole. You know, telescope
pirates attacked and shot at me but my life was saved by having the Infinity XL(K) in my breast pocket
and hey the (tiny) bullet hole in it seems useful even!

Dan

victor truglio said:

If there is a problem when mounting a new focuser because of old screw holes, is it ok to mount the focuser a little closer or further away from the primary or is it best to go across as not to change the length?

Unless one or more of the new holes is tripping over an old hole (i.e., you simply cannot drill
it because the bit cannot be positioned over partial air), then you might want to try sticking to
the old focuser location. Original holes which are too big can usually be dealt with. For example,
a short sleeve over the screw so that it positions correctly in the oversized hole.

If you simply cannot use the old location, then circumferential translation is your best bet. After
all, most secondaries can rotate 360 deg. And, it won't change your focus range nor require
moving your secondary up/down the length of the ota/uta.

Dan

Mike,

What have you done for the inside of the tube? That is, what sort of light "absorbing"
anti-reflection treatment did you do for the inside? While I know that there are
flat black powder coats, I've never seen one to evaluate just how flat it is and have
assumed that a different treatment is done for the inside of the tube. Of course, this
all assumes that this is a concern for you.

Dan

P.S. So what color did you go with?