Posts Made By: Alan Agrawal

Hi Roland,

I have a lot of respect for the equipment you make and also all the help and advice you share with everyone on this forum - its truly remarkable.

I have been reading some of your older posts (and have been getting an excellent education) and noted that you felt that newtonians were not top planetary instruments for several reasons (mirror dust, spider,cooling issues...) and that in general they were not well built.

I am trying to improve the Dob that I have built ( royce conical 10" f/6 with protostar quartz diagonal, fan cooled,flocked, 16" light shield extension at the top,catseye collimation)
Please take a quick look at this picture of Jupiter from a 13.1" newt -
http://www.acquerra.com.au/astro/gallery/jupiter/20070622-141156/large.jpg

It looks good to me but I wanted to see you what you thought in relation to the potential for newtonian design to produce high quality views. Interestingly, he uses an active cooling plate system for his mirror - its here at
http://www.acquerra.com.au/astro/equipment/13/
- do you think it would be useful to pursue building one of these cooling systems?

Are there any current production mak-cass's that you like with good optics and cooling in the 6-8" range?


Thanks,

Alan Agrawal

PS - I took your advice and ordered Atmos from AP today.

http://www.astromart.com/articles/article.asp?article_id=816

In case you haven't seen it, Joe Wambo has posted a superb review of his 32" telescope right here on the A-mart. Its a very detailed and informative piece, I would highly recommend it to anyone thinking about getting a big scope.

Hi guys,

I'm sorry - I should have made it more clear - I am certainly hoping to get Roland's input but if anyone has comments or feedback I'd love to hear it. I always learn something valuable from the forum posts, so don't hold anything back!

Thanks,

Al