Posts Made By: Daniel Freas

Love the new forum changes, photos turned out to be a lot more interesting than I thought they would be. I haven't done much of anything with astrophotography myself because of the limitiations of an undriven 8" dob but here's a shot I took holding a digital camera up to the lens a couple nights ago...not to bad for a handheld pic eh?

I have an 8" Celestron Starhopper and for the most part it's a wonderful scope. I've never seen another scope of the same aperture that I liked better, but one thing that does annoy me about it is the mount. For one thing it's rather large and bulky compared to other dob mounts and another is that it simply isn't as steady as a well built EQ mount. Are there any modifications that would improve either of those two problems?

I imagine the bulkiness issue would require a complete rebuild of the mount, but what about the shakiness at the eyepiece? Perhaps a crossbar added between the two arms of the dob mount or tension springs where mount and scope connect? What sort of things will help? Does anyone have a webpage detailing modifications they've made on their Starhopper?

---Daniel

My only scope right now is an 8" dobsonian that performs wonderfully but isn't capable of any real photography. So I've been thinking off and on lately about trading it plus some cash for an 8" SCT that I can take some pictures with. If the amount of cash wasn't important I'd just shell out the bucks for a 10" LX200 but that's not an option...

Anyway I've been looking at some SCTs and from what I see that central obstruction sure looks a lot bigger than the one in my dob. How much am I going to loose at the eyepiece when I make this switch? Will sharpness suffer? Does light gathering ability decrease to any significant extent?

The two obvious advantages of the switch will be the ability to do some astrophotography and a less bulky scope but what are the other pros and cons that I may not have thought of yet?

---Daniel

I've got this 4.5" TV projection lens that I bet would make a great telescope. Has anyone done this before? I'd appreciate some advice, and if there are any websites out there with plans for this I'd appreciate a link.

---Daniel

I put an ad up for an item and say "make me an offer" and I don't get a single response to the ad. Then later I put the exact same item up for sale with a set price and within an hour of placing the ad I've already got two people willing to take it. Do people have some sort of aversion to making an offer? The worst I could say is "no thanks, that's to low."

Odd...

Just out of curiosity, but what's the difference between the two designs? I've looked around on the net for an answer but all I managed to find was that the Mak's corrector plate is more extremely curved. But what are the main differences both mechanically and optically between the two designs? Is one better than the other? Or since most scope designs aren't better or worse than others as a whole what areas are they better than eachother in?

---Daniel

You've probably got more than enough ideas for now but I was thinking it would be kind of nice to be able to not only check a person's feedback but also a list of the feedback they've left for other people. Maybe that would lower the number of petty complaints that show up in people's ratings because the people leaving them would realize (hopefully) that if they have a history of giving negative feedback for stupid reasons no one is going to want to deal with them.

Just a thought~
---Daniel

I've got this homemade eyepiece that someone else made with no indication of its focal length. Is there any way to figure this out accurately? It looks to be a pretty neat little eyepiece except for the fact that it has a 1.1" barrel...I have no clue why. I guess I'll just wrap some tape around it or something.

---Daniel

I was spray painting the tube for a 60mm scope I'm rebuilding from parts out in my back yard about an hour ago. I had to let the paint dry so I left it there and went up to my garage. Fifteen minutes later I walk back down and as I'm walking to where I left the tube I see two little kids (probably between 10 and 13) running off down the street. So I get there and find the can of paint gone and my tree spray painted black!!! I'm gonna kill the little hellians if I ever find them!

Talk about annoying...at least I was done painting.

---Daniel

I just got this pair of German binoculars and I'm really impressed with the quality. Hopefully someone around here can tell me something about them. Steinheil Munchen is stamped on one side and on the other side 6 x 30 and then under that B 14738 and under that in large letters VL. Anybody know when they were made / how much they're worth? Besides knowing they're German, old, and 30mms I don't know anything about them except that I like them more than my 7 x 50s.

---Daniel