Posts Made By: Peter Haviland

Did any one notice that Lumicon has suspended operations?

The old on the new.

20 year old orange C11 on a 2 year old AP600EGTO.

I won the wood dob at the OBSP. It is a 10inch F5 that the St Pete mirror lab made.

I just got my Max40 and I was wondering if Dawes Limit applies to the 40mm of the Max 40 or does it apply to the scope I have it on? I have it on a FS60C now, and hope to have plate for my FS102 soon. The FS60C has a Dawes Limit of 117.65 power and the FS102 would have a limit of 200 power. I am thinking that Dawes Limit would apply to the 40mm of the Max 40, so my max power would be 78.43 no mater what scope I have it on.

What would be a good CCD camera, and filter system (used on AM) to start out with? Price range would be around $1K + $500 or -$200. I have a very good (20 year old orange) C11 and a FS102 ( I still need the field flattener) on a AP600EGTO. I do not have a guider, but I have a FS60C I could use with a 2X to guide with. I have thought of getting into Astrophotography, but I think I need the instant gratification of a CCD (albeit the digital processing you still need to do).

I have a TAK FS102 & FS60C that I will be interchanging two SBIG cameras on (ST-237A & ST4). Is there anyone out there that has used these telescopes with these cameras? I would like to know what combinations of extension tubes it takes to get the cameras in focus?

I want to upgrade the focuser on my Dob, and would like some comments on what is available out there. Here are the ones I know of:

JMI NGF DX1
MoonLite Dual Rate Crayford Focuser
Starlight Instruments Feathertouch Focuser

I have a Lapides modified TeeGul that I would like to put a DGS system on. How do I do it?

I had a real scary thought; my nice APO in a “Tow Missile Case” and given the climate today getting pulled over by Barney.

I saw the weirdest thing today viewing the sun with Solar Max 40 with a BF10 and a FS60C. There were these points of light shooting out of the sun, I would guess that they were all about the size of what Mercury would be (I did not see the transit so I am guessing), and they seemed to all be uniform. I would say most of them appeared to shoot out of the disk and radiate in different directions, but there where a few that seemed to shoot across the disk. There were times when there where many of these, and times when there were none. I had other people with me who saw it too. I have used this set up about ten times, and have never seen anything like it. For all I know it could be some sort of defect in my eye, like you see when you are viewing though a high power eyepiece, I think this happens when the exit pupil is small on the eyepiece. I was using a Meade SWA 18mm and a Nagler 16mm, so they should have a large exit pupil.

I thought about what it can be and nothing makes sense. I do not believe in ET, so you can discount that. I do not think they were meteors/asteroids/comets, because the size seemed uniform on them and they were moving pretty fast. They were moving consistent with how a satellite looks when it passes through you eyepiece view, but I do not think I would be able to see that many satellites passing (I would guess we saw about 25- 40) in front of the disk of the Sun. They also seemed to be illuminated like a satellite looks, but they were a shade of the red you see through the H-alpha. I am guessing that it was some sort of phenomena with your eyes, and what I and others were viewing was some float some in our eye balls.

Any suggestions or real ideas about what it was?

Ok gear heads, how do I mount a camera angle adjuster to a C11 with a JMI NGFS on it. The set screws on the JMI are tough to use with gloves, and my fingers are raw after a night of moving the diag. from one side to the other. On my Tak I have a camera angle adjuster which makes it so easy to rotate the diag.

There must be something out there that can be mounted to a JMI NGFS? I think one of the JMI adapters I have has a T-ring thread. Any ideas out there?

Peter