Posts Made By: Alex McConahay

You have a right to be excited!

Alex

John

http://astronomyboy.com/

is what I used to use.

Alex

You guys better not let John Dobson hear you talking like this!

Alex

You might get a lot of advice posting this down in the home observatories section.

Meanwhile--before putting that observatory up, dig yourself a deep hole. Maybe two or four feet deep and foot and a half to two feet across. This is essential to holding a pier. You are going to fill it with concrete and then either bolt the pier to it, or have it become the base of a concrete pier.

ANd then, as has been asked--why wood?

And finally--there is no one answer to your how high question. It depends on what tube style you are using (SCT's are lower than refractors, and newts are much lower still), whether it is mostly visual or cameras (cameras can go anywhere, people cannot controt quite that well), your observatory requirements (how high do you have to get your tube to see over the wall and get most of the sky you are interested in), and then your own preferences and style (how tall are you?).

You may want to imagine your current setup in the observatory (tripod and all). How high is the base of the mount head above the ground? that is about how high it has to be with a pier (all other things, like tube type being equal). Remember, if you set your tripod on a floor, you will have to add some distance because your pier will be coming up from the ground, not the floor.

(By the way--I know you have the answers to some of these questions already--but you get the idea.)

Alex

You said you've gotten no response.....

You have, I assume, emailed again, and that is what has not gotten responded to? You should have a response to an email in a reasonable time.

Have you sent anything to the second ad? See if he responds to that?

If the only thing you have done is send a money order, and he has not responded. It may be just about the time that the item should arrive in the mail. If that is the case--paitence is called for.

Alex

Consider first whether you have one of the newer CG-5's or an older one. This mount has been built for many years, and although they use the same designation, and look somewhat similar, the model has actually changed quite a bit in terms of heft, I think. If you have a relatively old CG-5, you may not want to go there, since you could upgrade to a heftier mount for not much more than upgrading the drive itself.

Alex

try this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGosTkosR8I

Alex

There may be more of this going on. We think it is due to the Year of Astornomy coming up in 2009.

I got a call the other day from a casting agency looking for some professional astronomers --"or at least somebody who could look right around a telescope." For a commercial that was going to be made.

Alex

You done good.

There's lots to learn in this. And it can get frustrating. But stick to it.

Alex

(PS....Don't call it "my old 20D" cause that's my main camera, and I don't want to think my stuff is old!)

The big drawback would be the small chip. A 100% zoomed image does not come close to filling a computer screen. And, of course, it is also harder to get the object of your desire on the chip unless you have good pointing accuracy.

On the other hand, it does the stuff the big boys do, and does it well. You get to use the image acquisition, calibration, and image-processing programs the $10,000 cameras do. You just do it on much smaller files. And you can make great pictures with it.

So, if you can get a good deal on one, take it.

Paired with a good wide-field refractor, you can do a lot of practicing, and produce some good shots. Put it on the 11 incher, even with 6.3, you might have trouble getting the object on the chip.....but you can overcome that problem.

Alex