Why I haven't been around here much recently

[h2olawyer]

I finally completed construction of my new telescope.  I ordered the kit in January, took delivery in late April and began construction on May 1.  After about 120 hours of actual work time, I finished it May 31.  Had it out last night to make some final tweaks and test it out.  It is a wonderful improvement over the old blue behemoth it replaces.  It stands just under 6 feet tall and is approximately 20x20 inches at the base.  The old blue scope weighs about 140 pounds - the new TeleKit comes in at 75 pounds.  It also breaks down into smaller parts making it much more portable.

The kit came complete with the precision cut aircraft grade baltic birch, all the hardware (tons of nuts, bolts, screws, velcro. tenacious tape, and even the ultra slow cure epoxy.  I supplied the tools, lots of sandpaper, sanding sponges, spar urethane and flat black paint.  I also installed a small computer and encoders that tell me where to point the scope to find whatever I want to look at.  The wood has four coats of the spar urethane to ward off the dew.  The other option I installed was a small heater to slightly warm the smaller secondary mirror so it doesn't dew or frost over.

The improvement over the old Coulter goes way beyond the weight & portability.  It moves extremely smoothly.  A gentle nudge gets it moving and it stops with equal ease.  It is entirely manual - no motor drives like on my other, smaller scope.  The views through this scope are amazing.  Much more detail than my smaller scope and I can see much dimmer galaxies and nebulae.

Here's the before photo:


And the after:


I'll have more detailed photos available in the next few days.

Maybe now, I can find time to get out and do some riding!   ;D

H₂O

[kwells]

Now go put some miles on that bike.

[YellowJacket!]

Great job H2O that looks fantastic.

Been missin you round here.  Good to hear from you again.

David

[Night Vision]

nice dove tails!

got any newer pics?

[h2olawyer]

Thanks, NV!  Actually, those are finger joints, not dovetails.  I can't really take credit for them - they were precision cut with a CNC router system at AstroSystems.  All the wood came cut to size - all I had to do was sand it, glue it, run a router over the edges (flush cut over the finger joints, 1/8" roundover on all edges and the 3/16" again over the finger joints) and fine sand it all again.  Then I applied the 4 coats of spar urethane.  I've still got a few minor tweaks to make, getting the balance just right but it is now fully usable.

This scope is purely for visual enjoyment.  I might be able to do some planetary and lunar photography with it, but that was not what I built it for.  I haven't been out astro imaging for a few months.  Will get back into it this summer.  The imaging system is so well automated that I can set that up for taking photos and then look at stuff through the "big" scope.

I also got involved in doing public outreach events.  I'd estimate that easily over a thousand people have looked through my telescopes since January.  We go to several schools a month and have regularly scheduled "Star Parties" at least once a month.  The school events typically have 200 - 250 students, teachers & parents in attendance and our monthly star parties get 20 - 50 people.  More tend to come out in the warmer months.  So, with all these events, it has taken away  some of my desire (and time) to get out imaging as often.  A shame since it requires lots of practice to improve those skills.  I might even sell the smaller telescope and invest in a couple good camera lenses, then use the imaging mount with only the camera and lenses.  Much lighter and easier to set up.

H₂O

[Tiger]

 8) HIYA h, glad to see you have been busy. Now ya need a sidecar for your Vision to mount that "Astro' cannon" too...LOL ;)

              8).......TIGER....... 8)

[h2olawyer]

Thought about the sidecar, but decided that a Venture Royale with a trailer might actually work better.   ;D

By the way, I'm now famous!

http://onlinelegacy.org/2010/06/bringing-home-the-universe/  (scroll down to second photo)

A whopping 5000 people might actually see this!  (that's the membership in the organization)  - Ok, maybe not that famous . . ..

This is my small 8 inch reflector that sees use primarily for imaging and public outreach.  It's outreach use will diminish now that I have a nicer visual scope with a computerized object locator.  (it makes finding cool things to look at much faster)  In the dim background is o good friend (of about 45 years!) with his 10 inch scope.  He sets up with a camera and his laptop to better show dimmer targets to the students.

The first photo of Dr. Dan Laszlo shows him with his 'smaller' telescope.  This one is just an 18 incher.  He has one with a 25 inch mirror.  He also has a really nice 7 inch diameter refractor (what most people think of when they think "telescope").  He's got lots of cool astro-toys.  He also has a 4 inch telescope for solar observation which is really amazing.

H₂O

[vadasz1]

This will make it easier.

[h2olawyer]

Thanks, vadasz.  That was taken at an outreach event in early March.  I was using my "little" scope since it has drives to track the targets.  Just got home and unloaded from my second public outreach in two nights.  Friday night, I was up in Rocky Mountain National Park with at least a dozen other amateur astrogeeks and we had around 60 people show up to look through the scopes.  It was really windy and we had a few cosmic weather vanes.  My new scope got blown around a bit.  The elk were in abundance and up there, they are nearly tame.  After the people all left, I spent a couple more hours enjoying the night sky through Dr. Laszlo's 25 inch beauty.  Looked at things I was viewing in my 13.1 inch and it's a whole different view through the bigger scope.  Things are much brighter and you can see tons more detail.  Got home from that one a bit before 4 Saturday morning.

Saturday was a bit closer to home  and in the foothills west of Loveland at Flatiron Reservoir.  More light pollution from Loveland & Ft. Collins, but still a good night.  Three of us there with scopes and about 25 people to look through them.  It was patchy cloudy so we had to find things in the holes to look at.  Still, i got some fantastic views.  Lots darker than my driveway!

Next weekend is new moon, so I'll be heading out for 2 or 3 nights under some really dark skies.  At least 2 hours from all the lights along the front range of the Rockies.  There is an outreach event scheduled for next weekend, but I'm going to be selfish and capture all those photons for myself!   ;D  I may be in the Nebraska Panhandle, the eastern Colorado plains or the southern Wyoming mountains.  Haven't decided exactly which I'll head for as yet.  There is a Star Party in Nebraska, but this time of year it could easily become an exercise in tornado avoidance.  However, I have a good friend who lives north of Scottsbluff that I'd like to visit.  Tough choices at this point.  As the weather forecast becomes clearer, I'll make up my mind where to go.

Clear Skies & Carpe Noctem!
H₂O

[vadasz1]

When you see Dr. Laszlo again greet him like this:

"Szerbusz csilagom!" 

enunciation: serboos cheelawgom.

Just to let you know the 'sz' in Hungarian is like 's' in English and the 'cs' is like 'ch'.

Don't worry Rob, he will have a nice smile on his face when he hears this from you.  ;)

[akvision]

You want clear dark sky... come to Alaska in December..  Congratulations on your new passion.. it is alway great to see learning and excellence..

What is the state of your stator??? still holding out?

[h2olawyer]

I finally found the answer of how to make a stator last forever -- just don't ride!  I'll bet Alaska skies in December are fantastic, but those damn Aurora Borealis tend to screw up otherwise pristine skies.   ;)

The views on Saturday night were pretty good.  I was in Rocky Mountain National Park with over a dozen other astronomers, making a presentation to the public.  We had around 60 guests.  We have seven more nights scheduled up there this summer.  Elevation is around 8500 feet and as the photo below shows, even the elk get curious!

After the public got cold, tired or bored, and all left, Dr. Laszlo and I stayed until after 2AM, gazing at all kinds of cool stuff through his 25 inch scope.  We were the last ones to leave.  His scope is the same style as mine (truss tube Dobsonian) but the mirror is nearly 2x larger in diameter and you need to go up six steps on a ladder to look through it when its pointed nearly vertical.  I'll try to get a photo of it next time.  As you can see, I can sit and look through mine at any angle.  I have a special chair that adjusts from 8 inches to 32 inches off the ground.  Very comfy (couch potato observing).

I left the black lycra shroud off because it was fairly windy and the shroud would tend to make the scope a cosmic weathervane.  The black bar running from the center of the half wagon wheel (altitude bearing) is the altitude encoder brace.  The encoder attaches to the nearby black box and helps me locate any of about 30,000 celestial targets.  There is another encoder attached to the center pivot under the scope.  These encoders are high resolution, 10,000 step units so it is a very accurate system.  There is also a small 12 volt muffin fan that helps keep the mirror at the same temperature as the air around it.  Everything is powered by a pair of 6V, 1.2Ah batteries wired in series to give 12 volts.  The batteries are on each side of the main mirror.



H₂O

[h2olawyer]

Don't remember if I showed this photo.  I took it last November.  It is the Great Nebula in Orion (M42).  Location is in the middle of Orion's sword.  The Horsehead Nebula is located very near the left star in Orion's Belt.  I'll try to image that this fall.  The Horsehead is difficult to see because it is really a dust cloud in front of an emission nebula that glows in the near infrared.  My camera isn't modified so the OEM infrared filter tends to block much of the near infrared wavelength, so the exposures need to be longer.  That requires better tracking and a really stable mount.

I have an 8 inch Newtonian scope on a German Equatorial Mount that accurately tracks whatever I'm trying to take a picture of.  It also uses a second smaller scope (solidly attached to the larger scope) with another camera attached to increase the accuracy of the tracking.  That is called an autoguider system.  The whole setup is quite computer intensive and uses 6 USB cables.  Then each part needs to talk to all the other parts.  Took me a few weeks just to figure out the different parts, locate the proper software and get it all communicating reliably.  I can run the entire setup from the laptop - including operating the focuser.  Gets pretty geeky when I get it all running.   :D



H₂O

[supervision]

 let the light show begin!  Looks cool, nice project, got it done in time for good weather

[h2olawyer]

let the light show begin!  Looks cool, nice project, got it done in time for good weather

Thanks sv.  The weather is supposed to be nice around here after midnight this time of year, but we've had only  4 decent nights since I finished the scope.  It's cloudy & rainy again tonight.  Guess that's part of the new scope curse.  Was going to head out to the Nebraska Panhandle (Bridgeport area, DonV) for a star party this weekend but I'd probably spend the entire time dodging thunderstorms and tornadoes.  Not looking much better around here.  Possibly Thursday but that's another public outreach event.

H₂O

[don_vanecek]

Hey old buddy if you ever do one in the sand hills sometime I could be tempted, as long as I can come up on the V. My problem right now is it's a real bitch to take time off from work.

[h2olawyer]

I have thought about attending the big Nebraska Star Party near Valentine.  But, the days are typically near 100 degrees and if the storms come out there. it can be really bad.  Won't be attending this year, but maybe next - now that I know you might visit.  I'll let you know & I still might change my mind for this year and attend the last 3 or 4 nights.  Need to decide before July 1.  The dates for this year's NSP sort of conflict with the Weekend Under the Stars in Fox Park, Wyoming.  That site is over 9000 feet in elevation, about 90 minutes from home and was my real introduction to really dark skies.

http://www.nebraskastarparty.org/

Managed to get about three hours under the stars last night.  It cleared up around midnight and the clouds rolled back in just before 3AM.  High level water vapor was thick - which means the contrast between galaxies or nebulae and the sky was reduced.  I use some special filters that allow only certain wavelengths of light through.  There were some things I could see with the filter, but disappeared entirely without it.  A prime example is the Veil nebula (NGC6960 & NGC6995).  Even with the filter, it was just a faint glow.  From a truly dark site, I can see details (without the filter) even in my little scope.  Haven't seen it from a dark site - yet - in my new one.

H₂O

[Brian Moffet]

Cool scope, you need to steam-punk it :-)

I don't know if it is adaptable, but I recommend the Canon 7d.  I just picked mine up on Saturday.  18 MP, 14 bit depth per color...  8 fps (which you probably don't need, but I can use :) )

[h2olawyer]

Nice photo & that Canon is a good one.

You're right - I don't need the video option.  I bought a Canon XSi (450D) a little over a year ago.  Once pixels shrink too far, the camera isn't as usable for astrophotography since stars will bleed over to adjacent pixels and can also 'bloom'.  Blooming doesn't seem to be a big issue with Canons, though and their low noise performance in long exposures is best in the business - even though the others are improving & not that bad.

I got the XSi used and it came with 2 batteries & 2 chargers.  Only about 100 shutter actuations so it was like new.  Still haven't seen a used one for as low a price.  Knew it was a screaming deal when I got it.  Didn't get a lens with it but I bought the 'nifty fifty' 50mm f1.8 so I could use it for more than just astro work.  Still need to send it off to have the internal infrared filter swapped out to one that lets more near infrared through.  I'd do it myself, but all those tiny ribbon cables I'd need to detach and reconnect scare me a bit.  Better just to pay someone who has done them before and guarantees their work.

The big deal about the XS & XSi over previous Rebels is the addition of Live View.  I can have the live image on the computer screen and focus the system.  Before, you had to get the focus close, take a frame, tweak the focus, take another frame, repeat - repeat.  Wastes a ton of shutter actuations.  The XSi also has 14 bit color.  The astro specific cameras are cooled CCD units that have 16 bit color.  However, instead of a few hundred bucks those sell for $2300 & up.

Processing the Canon Raw format photos is interesting.  They are converted to FITS format, demosaiced and color processed into 16 bit format.  Then a whole ton of exposures are aligned & stacked.  Exposures run from a few seconds to 5 or even 10 minutes.  Then the data is stretched and curves are applied.  Wish I had a full version of Photoshop.  Allows working with 16 bit images and the curves are easier to manipulate.  I have a hard time justifying spending that much $$ on softare that will make  a small (but noticeable) improvement in my images.

Below is a scope I've had the pleasure of looking through a couple times.  Truly amazing.  I saw the Horsehead Nebula visually for the first time through it.  (Not an amazing thing to look at but it is difficult to see even in a large scope under really dark skies.  You are basically looking for subtle differences in shades of dark grey & darker grey.  This scope has a 30 inch mirror.  Made by the same company that produces the kit I built.  Want to get a photo of mine next to it sometime this summer.



H₂O

[fret not]

H2O, fascinating hobby.  Maybe YOU will find the next comet or make some other discovery.  Cool scope! 8)