Posts Made By: Greg Kim

I have a feeling there is always someone in our Astromart community imaging Mars on any given clear night.
I would like to start a thread that puts up a daily image of Mars through occultation, could you please post any image starting with last night 10-10-2005 and let's keep it going till at least occultation. Final quality is not what matters but just visual confirmation and daily posting is the idea.
Much thanks in advance.
Lets have some fun with this, Mars is sure bigger than ever in the EP one more time.

Greg

I have successfully cleaned several mirrors of used scopes I've bought over the years by following a simple procedure. Before I say how I would like to hear from others to see what they have done. It's not as hard as everyone makes it out to be.
The method came from the manual of first Newtonian I bought and I didn't know any better and I believed it to be gospel and it made sense.
I believe not cleaning will cause the coating to deteriorate quicker over time because of natural interaction of the coatings with contaminates that will fall on the mirror and eat away at the coating. So in my opinion a heavily used mirror should be cleaned at least every year and a half or at least every 2 years assuming buildup of dust. Also the dust holds the moisture more easily so the mirrors fog up easier on an all nigher. Opinions.

A photo of the past nights veiwing setup. 4 total. And a no dew night at that! Total setup time...under 15 min, most of which is the big guy as the others are all ready to go.

Well actually it should read Discovery and Orion.
I modified a 10" Discovery dob DHQ to fit a 12" Orion Intellisocpe by puting the bearing on the outside of the box, what a perfect fit!

Greg

I would like to see any scopes that have been redone with custom paint jobs. Looking for graphic additions or different color schemes that work well. Something other than a stock look and not just a hand brushed job for paintings sake.

Best to all
Greg

Anyone ever just didn't want to put away the scope because they are addicted and followed through into the daylight and bag some bright stars just for the fun of it and maybe a planet like Saturn with their goto scope?
That's just what I did this morning, the Sun rose and I punched in Saturn, and there it was, faint but visible. Then I bagged Arcturus, Pollux and Castor and back to Saturn. This was as late as 11:15 AM.
The way to do it is to have the scope already dialed in before sunrise and key is to have a wide field low power eyepiece already focused and locked in the scope as focusing is very difficult if not impossible if your goto is slightly off and then finding the target star is just about impossible, because even if it is the field of view your eye won't find it easily if out of focus and you tend to past focus and not see it.
This was done with the lowly LXD-55 which I had aligned the previous night at about 9 PM and had not once performed a sync! I actually feel doing a sync throws off the averaging and limits you to that part of the sky synced and so you are always having to sync on a new location to have accuracy.
Anyway thats the semi technical part, the main reason for the post is, you don't have to put that scope away just yet because the Sun came up and it may surprise many that you can see stars in the day! (This morning was exceptionally clear as was the atmosphere all day).

Greg

I'm not finished reading yet, but I so intrigued on the biography of John Dobson that I'm reading, I wanted to post the site http://www.telescopepictures.com/

I was watching TV of all things Tech Now (interesting for such low tech) and they did a piece on John and said there was a film being made and available on DVD and I immediately had to check it out and the bonus was a PDF. file with a great account of John's humble beginnings.
Enjoy!

Regards,
Greg

I'm not finished reading yet, but I so intrigued on the biography of John Dobson that I'm reading, I wanted to post the site http://www.telescopepictures.com/

I was watching TV of all things Tech Now (interesting for such low tech) and they did a piece on John and said there was a film being made and available on DVD and I immediately had to check it out and the bonus was a PDF. file with a great account of John's humble beginnings.
Enjoy!

Regards,
Greg

Byers 812 and 12.5 Cave F7.

Greg

Let's throw them up there.

Regards,
Greg