Posts Made By: Alex McConahay

I have a twelve and a half BVC....I goround, polished, etc myself. I am totally happy with it.

Alex

Randy,

You will be able to see sunspots, and if you are lucky, and the focus and seeing cooperate, you will catch the patterns of the surface of the sun.

You can track these disturbances through the month, and see new ones start, and grow, and fade. You can see how they kinda come in pairs. It can be fascinating.

You will not see flares, or prominences. These are beautiful, but are drowned out in the general "white light" that comes from the sun. If you had a hydrogen alpha filter specially made for solar viewing, you would be able to see the proms. But they are unavailable to white light filters like the Baader.

Alex

In Lubbock Texas, the sun is only 1.4 degrees above the horizon at the time of annularity. Even in Albuquerque it is only 5 something.

I cannot see investing however many hours of driving that is to see a sun on the horizon. One little cloud, a little haze, or a hill (not that a hill would be anywhere near Lubbock) would destroy the view.

Alex

My experience is that you will have to play this one by ear. Aside from some generalizations, it will be greatly determined by the individual personalities here.

Generalizatons:

If somebody has photographic equipment attached, it is a good sign that the person will be running the imaging, and really not sharing.

If somebody has a line at the scope, it is a good sign that they are sharing. Announcements like: "Hey, I got the blue snowball in the scope--anybody want to see it?" is a dead giveaway that it is sharing time.

Other than that--you just have to judge by how it is going. The standard--"What you looking at?" will be returned with a "Not much" or with a "So and So--wanna look?" At RTMC last year, on three successive nights I had "guests" for hours on end. It was actually hard for me to get my observing list done--but I enjoyed it.

Alex

Very Pretty, Paul. Good Catch.

Alex

If you do not get an answer soon from an experienced user, contaxt ADM Accessories http://admaccessories.com/

and ask Anthony. It will probably come down to radius blocks (that fit the side of the tube to convert the round sides to a flat surface, and one of his dovetails to hold it together.

Alex

I wish I were in Indiana. (Actually, my "people" were a generation ago.)

At any rate. USing a 12 inch Meade LX200 with an ST-7 will be overwhelming. Don't take it personally. THis is a great setup for extremely small planetaries, and dim galaxies. However, even with an F6.3 reducer/corrector, the combination of its great focal length and the ST-7's smallish chip makes this a challenge. You would probably be best off to find a short focus refractor to put on top the LX200, and use the ST-7/refractor riding on top to do the imaging until you learn what you are doing.

And yes, get a guru you can visit with regularly.

Alex

That looks so much better than my last image of M95.

Alex

Experience says that if you have a digital SLR at all, you can just get a t-mount adapter and fit it to your telescope. That will enable you to get good pics of the moon and (with a solar filter) the sun.

If your DSLR can take movies, you can also take planets with your dob.

In both cases you can get (or make) adapters that will allow you to put a point and shoot camera to the eyepiece and take pictures of the sun, moon, and planets.

And whatever you use, you may have some difficulty getting the camera to focus (not enough in-travel or out-travel). However this can generally be fixed with extension tubes, collimation screws, moving the mirror, or changing the focuser.

Other than that, your Dob is not really suited to take pictures. You have to be able to track to take pictures of the stars and nebulae, and Dobs just do not do it.

If you have no camera whatsoever, I would highly recommend one of the Canon DSLR's, particularly one with LiveView. These are generally what the imagers are using nowadays. This camera will take great daytime family, etc. pictures, and can be used at night. Again, though, your astroimaging will be limited to sun, moon, and planets with a Dob. (Of course, you can also take star-trails, and starscapes, etc. with your dslr, without the dob.)

The most critical, and if done well most expensive part of an imaging setup is the mount. ANd the Dob simply does not qualify.

ALex

In several places, the TOS forbids use of copy righted material unless one owns the copyright.

Alex