Posts Made By: John Miele

Hi, I want to use a small red dot finder for weight control on my truss dob. I find the Telrad to be too heavy. I tried a rigel quickfinder, but I had a hard time lining my eye up with the reticle because of the small viewing glass. I then tried the orion ez finder and the mars eye finder. But found they both have a coating on the lens that dims the stars too much for my taste. Sigh, maybe I'm just too picky. Does anyone know of a compact red dot finder that has both a large and a clear front glass where the dot is projected? Does the Baader sky surfer IV fit this description?

John

A few weeks ago, my friend and I were observing various objects in Orion with his 18" motorized Plettstone dob, when we noticed a satellite slowly moving thru the FOV. We followed it for a minute and started to have a hunch it might be a geosynchronous satellite (partly because it was so faint in the 18" dob). So we switched off his tracking and sure enough the satellite sat still in the field and all the other stars bagan to slowly drift by. It was a very cool effect and was the first time I have ever seen this occur. Anyone else see this before?

John

I am trying to find some information concerning any star parties being held this Summer at Fall Creek Falls in Tennessee. Does anyone know who I could contact for information? Thank you.

John Miele
VBAS

Hi All,

I have not posted for quite a while. I finally bought a used Toucam pro 740 on Astromart and started trying it out on Mars a few weeks ago. North Alabama weather has not been good to me lately. But this morning had fairly steady skies although the humidity was so bad you could almost cut the air with a knife. Here is my first decent (for me) attempt at Mars.

C11 @ F30 10fps
IR filter
Toucam Pro 740
K3CCDTools and Registax 2.0
Approx. 700 frames

I noticed what looked like a ghost image in a lot of my frames. Like Mars had a second fainter limb on the right side. Anyone know what might cause this? Could it be dew on the corrector plate or maybe something wrong with my Barlow (3X antares barlow)? I collimated pretty carefully before i started. The stacked image even shows a false limb on the right and the polar cap got way overexposed. Lots to learn, but it is fun!

Hi All,

Imaged Mars last night (22nd) from North Alabama. Seeing was not too good. I'm wondering if I have the dust storm showing up in the upper right portion of the image as the light tannish colored region? I used a C11 and Toucam 740 working at F30. About 800 frames stacked out of 1200 frames. Captured at 10fps. I can't ever seem to get a crisp focus. I don't know if it's my scope or the seeing. But I will keep trying.

Regards,

John Miele

I just tried out my brand new pair of Burgess Binoviewers at the recent PSSG and would like to share my experiences in using them. I ordered the BB’s a week before the stargaze and explained to Burgess that I really wanted to use them there. Burgess got in a shipment the next day. The day after that, I had a fedex box on my front porch! The unit arrived well packed and undamaged. I waited until the first night of the stargaze to try them out in my Nexstar C11. The nosepiece was a good snug fit in the diagonal. I had quite a range of people view with me. One guy had eyes almost on the side of his head 8O whereas my eyes are very close set (57.5mm apart). But the Binoviewer accomodated everyone. So the inter-occular adjustment is good. I tried out some 24mm Pans, the supplied 20mm Burgess EPs, some 12.5mm Ultimas, and some 9mm UO Orthos. All these EPs reached focus. I also had no problems merging any of the images, although a little EP jiggling was required some of the time. The images were great. As others have noted, I found that fainter objects were usually better seen with monovision. But brighter globular and open clusters and Mars were outstanding in the binoviewer. I was disappointed when the 24mm Pans vignetted badly and I would not recommend them. But the 20mm Burgess EPs were surprisingly good and had no vignetting. The 12.5mm ultimas were perfect for Mars and showed a lot of detail when it steadied up. But the 9mm UO Orthos were pushing the seeing limit for Mars that night. In general, EPs with undercut barrels are awkward but usable. The set screws never seem to catch the undercut in the right spot. I tried an Orion Stratus EP but the body was so wide it “sat” on top of the set screws. I would not recommend the Stratus line to use with BB’s. All in all I thought the Burgess unit was an excellent buy and I plan to perform most of my mid to high power planet viewing with the binoviewer. I have to note one view that stood out from the rest. The skies were very dark and the Milky Way was magnificent the first night at PSSG. I was viewing M42 in the binoviewers. It was well past midnight and Orion was pretty high in the sky. I slowly panned across the brightest portion of the nebula towards M43. The contrast between the bright nebula and the dark regions between the two objects was incredible. The pseudo 3D effect was in full swing. I was totally immersed in the view, and for just a moment, I had an almost overwhelming sensation of vertigo, as if I were about to tumble off my seat into the void. It was very very cool. I have never had that experience with monovision.

Being slightly, well ok, a little more than slightly 8) on the other side of 40, my already bespeckled eyes now need reading glasses. I'm thinking of getting progressive lens but I'm worries how well they will work for vewing the night sky and at the telescope. I currently wear my glasses with my low and med power EP's and remove them with my high power EPs'. I also like to use binoculars and I have to wear glasses because my binoculars don't have enough focus travel to accomodate my bad eyes (6.5 diopters!) Could anyone share their experiences with using progressive lenses in the hobby? Would getting two pair of glasses be better? One for distance and one for reading the charts. Many thanks!

John

I am imaging planets with a Toucam Pro 740 webcam and a C11 telescope. I am also using a Schuler 1.25" Luminance filter with built in IR block. The part number is F317-LUM. My question is whether this is a good filter to use for imaging planets. In general, I thought that by blocking the IR light, one is supposed to get a sharper image. This is due to something about the sensitivity of webcam CCDs to IR light? And I have had some fairly good results with this filter, But I have this nagging feeling that maybe I should be using some other filter type. I do have a hard time getting a good color balance with this filter. Especially on Mars where I always got a lot of blue fringing on the disc. All comments will be appreciated. Thanks.

John

Hi,

I have the burgess binoviewer and I really enjoy it with my C11. However, I'd like to get a wider FOV. Does anybody know if the Denk starsweeper can be used with a Burgess BV? Or is there a different OCA that would work to reduce my f/ration to f6 or thereabouts? Thanks!

John

Image of Saturn from Jan 31. The recent storm showed up in the processed image fairly well. I could not see it visually however. This is a stack of about 990 frames out of 1700. Seeing was good. Still need to work on the colors. They look a little strange.

Nexstar C11XLT
2.5 Powermate
Toucam Pro 740
Registax 2.0