Posts Made By: Thomas Picciani

Posting this on behalf of and with the permission of the Rockland Astronomy Club:

Fellow RAC Members:

As you may have heard, Rockland Astronomy Club is not officially sponsoring this year’s Summer Star Party (SSP) up at Shady Pines in Savoy, MA.

However, even though RAC is not OFFICIALLY sponsoring SSP, many of us are going up for the full 10 days or parts thereof to camp, stargaze, etc. There simply will not be any food plan or activities on-site. Some people will be doing their own cooking at the campground and others will be going to various restaurants. Shady Pines will have some meals on a pay-as-you-go basis. It’s up to you !!

You can contact Shady Pines by web searching Shady Pines Campground in Savoy, Ma. (Forum rules prevent the link from being posted)


We apologize for the confusion and any incovenience regarding SSP 2012. We will have all the issues resolved and we will be back at Shady Pines in 2013 with a bigger and better SSP full of exciting events for everybody to enjoy. Thanks for your patience and we hope to see you up at Shady Pines next week.



Sincerely,



The Rockland Astronomy Club Executive Committee

I've been getting word that the new site for the Summer Star Party, Peppermint Park near Plainsfield, Ma. is pulling out all the stops to make this a great event. The exact details are on the official Rocklandastronomy.com site. I've also looked at the site on the Dark Sky Map and while it isn't Cherry Springs, the map shows it as green which is very good. I'm pumped!

I've been in amateur astronomy for a long time and never saw anyone put a sticker on a mirror! Whoever coated the mirror probably put the sticker on it. There's a possiblity however that extreme heat loosened the adhesive, maybe when the sticker was on the back of the mirror and it migrated to the front. I don't know.

Have you looked at the coating with a magnifying glass to make sure there's no significant damage? Minor scratches and such won't affect the image or view. But if the coating is dulled or significantly damaged the coating might need to be stripped and redone. Probably that would cost around $100-150 including shipping. BTW, if you do that, look at Majestic Coating in New Jersey. Haven't had a mirror coated in years but they always did a great job.

I think that the first issue I have with the whole situation though is that you didn't see the sticker on the mirror on day 1. And because of that you passed up the chance to return the scope and find something else. For that reason I believe the fair thing is to accept that you have a working scope and start lookup at the sky. I'd leave the other guy alone. IMHO.

Tom P.

Spent a week at Summer Star Party. Lots of rain but enough clear skies to get this.

Scope: C9.25 at F/10
Camera: STF-8300 using Optec Filter wheel and Astrodon 50 mm LRGB filters. 2x2 binning

Not enough nights to get the luminance. Created false luminance out of RGB.

10 minute x 10 RGB over 2 nights.

Used CCDStack and Photoshop.

Credit to Adam Block for the tremendous image processing lesson videos.

The biggest concern is the moment arm of your mount. Once you exceed 36 inches you have to start considering the shake and oscillations that might happen from all sorts of factors including wind.

I'm using a G11 with Geminin on a C 9.25 and a ton of stuff hanging off the back for photography. But if I were to have something 2 or 3 times as long there's no way the G11 could handle it.

But the Losmany Titan might work. You might consider buying a used Titan, put a Gemini 2 system on it and upgrading the worm if you need to with an Ovision worm from France.

By the time you get done it will be pretty pricey but when it comes to mounts you only want to do this once. Buying and selling back and forth to get the right thing only wastes money.

And then there's Astrophysics...

Tom P.

I use instead a pair of 92 Amp Hour AGM marine batteries. I use one to power scope, camera, and dew heaters. The other is either kept in reserve or used to power the laptop when there's no AC on the field. Since they are AGM they are sealed with pressure ports on the cells and there's no chance of leakage. And since there's no chance of evaporation, they won't dry out in my garage when the temperature gets hot. Cost with core was around $200 each.

I just came back from Black Forest Star Party. I image because my eyesight is fading. Looking at M101 in a 20 inch dob only gives me a faint hint of spiral arms. But as to spreading light onto the field from my laptop I take every precaution to prevent it. Instead of the red screen filter I used 3 layers of ND filter material equivalent to 7 f/stops. That keeps the light to a minimum. Also, after 60 seconds the screen dims significantly so there's no obtrusive light. Also, I put my laptop inside a cotton duck enclosure that's draped around stacked camping tables.
Would I do it if I didn't have eye problems? Yes. Taking images is art. It's creating pretty pictures. That's the reason we image.

Tom P.

My C9.25 is 7 years old and the image is pretty good. But the threaded connector on the rear cell came loose slightly enough to rotate when attaching equipment to it. I had to drill into the seam and insert thick wire to act as a stop. I used some thick copper wire, 10 ga. I think.
But it wasn't pretty when I was done. Not sure the Chinese manufacture fixed this.

Tom P.

You can get them on Ebay or look for Harry Glatter's products. Treat them like a gun. Never point them at anyone even if you think they're off. And leave them at home for star parties.

For my laptop I went with Neutral Density filter material from All Pro Sound (Florida based company). They sell film. I layered 2 pieces of 3 stop (.9) Lee filter material. I can run the brightness up from its lowest setting so the text comes out cleaner without illuminating the entire field.