Posts Made By: Mark Jordan

Hi Marcy,

If you look at a couple of the photos on the gallery link I posted to Maurice you can see the "track system" I used.  V Casters on a track I fabricated from 1/4" X 4" flat steel bar and a 3x3x1/4" angle welded on.  The "tie down" system has withstood 100+ straight line winds we had here a couple of years ago.  Took out old growth trees all around me....  I was on duty that night, what a relief to come home the morning after and see everything still in place unmolested by the wind storm!!

Mark

Maurice,

I'll give it a look about, may be in my CAD backup folder...  But I cleaned up a lot of the older since built or abandon designs and ideal drawings when i moved most of the backups and files onto the new main desktop workstation I built recently.  As far as the observatory in its self I'll try to get you a few shots of the existing structure along with some plan info.  The actual roof structure is a minor shed truss system I fabricated.  The simple trusses are mounted, braced, and tied into/onto a laminated set of side beams made from doubled 2x4 with a 1/2" 5 ply exterior plywood center.  Glued and screwed together to make 2 - 3 1/2 x 3 1/2 beams, which the trusses are secured to.  The casters were fabricated by me out of 1/4" x 4" A36 steel bar and 3 1/2" ball bearing steel V caster wheels.  They run on a steel reverse V track I fabricated from again 1/4" x 3 1/2" A36 Steel flat bar with as I remember 2" x 2" X 1/4" steel angle welded to the bar to make the running track for the V casters.  The track was mounted with screws to the top of the double 2x4 top plates of the side walls.  When I initially built the trellis with the beams for the roof to roll off onto I put a 3/8" fall from the point of mount in the building wall to the end beam for drainage.  The trellis beams are standard TD 4x6 with the support posts 6' on center.  Screwing the beam together was the easy way given I used an electric Dewalt impact, the rolling track screwing is a must so the track will not work loose with use.

As for the ideal of the power gate opener, yes i drew that up too and sill have to see if I still have it.  I've not done it yet, because for me just rolling the roof off manually is still working well enough for me to not drop the extra $500 - $600 on the Obs yet to get it done.  Maybe one day I will, it would be a pretty nice feature to have and I can fabricate the mounting brackets to get everything how it would work best for my particular setup.  Make a mounting plate and such to place the electric drive unit up where it needs to be to run the rack gear on the side of the roof structure.

This was the unit as I remember I was looking at to use for the powered roof roll off:

https://www.alekoproducts.com/ALEKO-AR2050-Sliding-Gate-Opener-p/ar2000acc-ap.htm

It basically takes fabricating a drive unit mount which the unit mounts "upside down" on to be able to run it Like I would want to...!  Workable, but a little more work than just setting up a base plate on the side of the observatory.

Hi Thomas,

I have one and have to say I really am surprised by its performance so far!  I stepped up from a re-figured, and otherwise modified Orion 10" "Astrograph" F3.9 OTA to the 12" Quattro.  I have some AP results from the Quattro in my albums on my website. Getting the coma corrected is possible and believe it or not I got the best handle on it with the SkyWatcher Quattro Coma Corrector which Skywatcher sells most specifically for their Quattro line of Newtonian OTA series.   I had a Televue 2" Paracorr corrector, which worked good for my 10", but not quite as good of a correction with my 12".  It can be a bit twitchy at first to get the spacing right on and currently get the best results @ 56mm of spacing from corrector lens to sensor.  Visually the 12" is superior in visual quality to the Orion AG10 was when corrected.  Not just because of the aperture, but because of getting a good correction to the edges with the 12".  I replaced the focuser with a Moonlite 2" Newtonian focuser (motorized) as most of what I do anymore is either EAA or AP...  More to thwart the ever increasing light pollution here than anything.  Visual here is getting a lot of LP interference now.  Used to have some fairly darker skies here but urban sprawl has been encroaching that more and more.  When I moved here in 1994 I could see the Andromeda Galaxy very very faintly naked eye...  Not for several years now though!  The main reason I replaced the focused was due to my AP, the stock focuser was not bad at all for visual work, but did not motorize to my satisfaction.

I guess it would come down to what you expect and want in the way of performance, but I am quite satisfied with it for my EAA and AP.  It is a heavy outfit and I have mine mounted on a Losmandy D dovetail instead of the stock one it came with, on a Titan Mount.  I not an expert or user of multiple types of optical setups, mainly have used the Newtonian type of OTA and smaller 80 - 102mm Refractors.  I once had an 8" Newtonian...  Orion Skyview Pro with a RF Royce Primary replacing the original Orion one and a Protostar Secondary which was an excellent little Newt for both AP and Visual...  Still needed a corrector though!  The visual and AP sharpness and clarity of the 12" is superior to that scope as well.  Obviously 4" more aperture is a huge advantage, But I'm not just talking about the depth of reach, talking actual clarity of even the brighter stars and objects.  The Royce was actually a better OTA in those things than the 10" was.  Aperture fever was not the best choice in that case, don't get me wrong the 10" with the Swazye re-figure gave a pretty good show.  For that reason I actually held onto the 10" until I had used the 12" Quattro for a bit, but the Quattro has proven to be -to me- a really good improvement over the 10" in about all of the bullet points.  Just put the 10" up for sale as I am keeping the Quattro!

You can find some AP from the Quattro here:

http://thestardeckobservatory.com/piwigo/index.php?/category/29

NGC6823 is where I got the spacing pretty close to right, changed up the spacing setup for some 80mm work and did not get it set back right again until just recently.  It is a challenge to get it right with this OTA, but it is doable, unfortunately here in central Indiana clear nights friendly to AP are few!  As you can see this album is the QHY168c camera album, so looking at a pretty good FOV or image resolution.  Haven't really tried it with My smaller sensor cameras yet.  Weather here is just typical for here not many good nights for AP this time of year, too many cloudy, windy, or such nights, been under overcast skies here since 01/21/2020.  Even on the 21st it was not ideal, wind and ice haze, but I got a session on NGC281.  Came out pretty fair, I'll post that image when I get back to my main workstation where all of the data and imagery is at right now!  Anyhow I hope I've helped to answer some of your questions.  I'll get the NGC281 PacMan Image posed on this thread tonight If I have time, will be about a week if I don't get it done tonight.

Mark

Oh, one other note on the 12" Skywatcher Quattro Newtoinan.  Some of the Chinese larger aperture have been known to have some flex or deformation in the actual OTA Tube under the load of an astrophotograpy full setup, Camera, filter wheels and such...  This one does not in my experience with it, not a bit from what I've noticed and was one of the things I was weary of when I initially got it.  One of the reasons I held onto the Orion for a bit!  I have had up to 6 1/2 lbs of equipment on the focuser with my QHY163M and 7 place 36mm filter wheel, yada, yada, yada...  No deformities or tube flex seen or noted.  Seems to handle the weight of AP equipment sitting on it at any position, pointed to the zenith at the meridian, laying out for a low horizon object, whatever...  Not seen or experienced any problems with it.

Mark

Here is the image of NGC 281 the Quattro Coma Corrector was set @ 55mm spacing on this image acquisition, as you can see there is still some sight coma @ the corners.   I shot some subs of M41 around the first of February seeing and such shut me down with only about 6 subs so I did not get any calibration frames or such, but the subs were showing the coma corrected @ the 56mm spacing.  I will likely have a full resolution image posted in my QHY168c album late next week.

Friend sent me this cause this number was one my father liked a lot.  He had always desired to learn the steel guitar, but was a bit busy working a couple of jobs and moonlighting in his own HVAC growing business which he grew to a good success.  He always put his family first, The Four Freshman were actually cousins of his, and he enjoyed going to see them when they were in town.

Anyhow I thought it might be a refreshing break from the funny papers in the "other" form below during this time of "spending more time at home !  !!

The Steel Guitar; good rendition!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSG4w4D54PQ&feature=youtu.be

The Original by Herb!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16B5Xm8_IKw

Anyhow, enjoy (or not) & keep your chins up, this too shall pass!

Clear Skies and calm nights all!!!

Hi Frank,

For that particular shot I was using the QHY168C with the STC-Duo "Narrowband" Light Pollution Reduction filter.  The Coma Corrector was the SkyWatcher Quattro 4 element CC which slips right into a 2" focuser tube of the Moonlite.  I use a Baader Vari-Lok 29 adjustable extension tube with the setup as well, it is screwed into the attachable rotator piece QHY sends with the 168C camera and screwed onto the t2 adapter piece that fits on the Quattro Coma Corrector.  I get the best corrections @ a 55mm +/- .5mm from the sensor face to the the CC lens.  I also had a Tele Vue Parracor 2 I had tried with the 12" F4 Quattro prior to getting the SW Quattro  CC, but it did not do as well for me as the addition of the SW Quattro did.  Can't pin point why the SW CC did better than the Tele Vue, I had the Tele Vue with my somewhat improved Orion 10" F3.9 Newtonian and it did great!!

I have the QHY163M as well with the Xagyl 7 place 36mm unmounted filter wheel, and while I have not tried it yet I could see where trying to get an OAG in the imaging train while maintaining some proper spacing between the CC & the Sensor could be a bit dicey.  Haven't used the 163M with the 12" Quattro yet, but will sometime when there are more nebular objects on my list.  As for attaching the FW would be about the same as for the OSC 168c, except for FW to 163m camera standard front flange, corrector to spacer, spacer to FW.  If I remember right I only needed an extra 7mm of spacer from the FW to the CC to get to the desired 55 - 56mm total from sensor to CC with the Xagyl wheel in place.

Another note on the !2" SW Quattro OTA I would mention is the topic of collimation.  It takes a quality collimation tool or tool set to get the collimation on this or about any other Newtonian design OTA in the 10" "fast" & above aperture range tuned in well.  You're not going to get by well with a simple laser or cheap peep sight or 1.25" Cheshire eye piece.  I went with the Cat's Eye 2" TELECAT XLTM + INFINITY XLKP set when I got the 10" Newtonian...  It works beyond great for the 12".  I just use the original center ring the OTA came with instead of the CatsEye replacement, the original center marker works great for me.  It really does give you perfect collimation, as well as for me revealing quickly any imperfections in your entire focuser tube to secondary, secondary, spider, and primary alignments.  Allowing you to get ...Everything... tuned in and lined up the first time fairly quickly.  After that it's a snap to do a quick check and any minor corrections that might be needed on your mirrors.

A side note on the Light pollution filter I use:  I tried the STC-Duo for a bit, then did a couple of head to head comparisons of the STC Duo to the Astronomiks CLS-CCD LPR filiter because it seemed to me the CLS-CCD was dong a better job of picking up more faint dust and gas than the Duo while still reducing the LP just as well or better when using them at the same imaging light frame timings.  I went back to the CLS-CCD, the filtering graphs for the wavelengths of light are pretty much the same, but with my older Canon Hutech Modified 40D and now the new QHY168c the Astronomiks filter just gives more faint detail than the STC-Duo.

Astronomiks CLS-CCD LPR Filter:

http://thestardeckobservatory.com/piwigo/picture.php?/245/category/29


STC-Duo NarrowBand Filter:

http://thestardeckobservatory.com/piwigo/picture.php?/246/category/29

I will likely do a couple more comparisons of some of the Summer Objects (Nebula), but from another outing the results were similar, however both nights on that outing the sky conditions were fairly unstable.

Mark

CS!

Number of new cases seems to be falling off drastically in the last 4 days of reporting from the CDC, hopefully the trend continues in this direction!

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/cases-in-us.html

on the bottom 3rd of the page is the reported new cases since January 12


COVID-19 cases in the United States by date of illness onset, January 12, 2020, to April 9, 2020, at 4pm ET

"* Data include both confirmed and presumptive positive cases of COVID-19 reported to CDC or tested at CDC since January 21, 2020, with the exception of testing results for persons repatriated to the United States from Wuhan, China and Japan. State and local public health departments are now testing and publicly reporting their cases. In the event of a discrepancy between CDC cases and cases reported by state and local public health officials, data reported by states should be considered the most up to date."

This is data showing things are turning in the right direction, hope the trend continues this should be good news for everyone.

Have fun beating this one up...  I had a good laugh!   Um, yea bit of cabin fever here, um yup, yup, yup!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AA2r6rca2v4

CS & take care!

Yup, Canada has it all under control guys!  After all they just saved us from a major invasion of The Empire with TrueDodo's firearms policies.  His stormtroopers are better than their troopers, maybe...  it took what 4 - 5 of them to get one young new female recruit beatdown!!  Thank God she was foolishly carrying an assault weapon openly and frightening some passers by who called it in.  the UN should hold an awards ceremony for those brave officers going up against an armed Imperial StormTrooper and saving Earth from the tyranny of the Empire!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ql9RU2EH1tg

ALTHOUGH...  !!! they were actually pretty safe as everyone knows...  Those Imperial StormTroopers can't hit the broadside of a barn at 6ft. away!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KxiNcmTljs

Still though, how brave to approach and apprehend anyone with such a dangerous, powerful, and lethal as an Imperial MK21 Blaster...!!