New Lightbridge and House!

[bkm2304]

This my new Lightbridge and its new home. I have constructed the housing from 3/4" ply and then covered it with a ripple iron skin on the outer walls and a corrugated iron roof. Inside will be coated with styrofoam and the floor has a temporary black plastic covering soon to be overlaid with heavy rubber matting. The scope is on casters so rolls out with ease and is reday in less than a minute. Argo navis on its way.

The nights since purcahse on April 18 have been pretty poor and the few good nights have had a big moon so I have yet to really stretch the scope yet in my locality which is pretty horribly light polluted especially from the coal loader. But despite this the scope has been very good regardless of the moon and poor seeing. The scope has shown up weaknesses in a few of my eyepieces - especially the 2" 26mm that came with it. My Vixen LVW 17mm is superb however. So here's hoping for some good nights soon!

Richard

[ballaratdragons]

Looks great Richard.

But do yourself a favour and buy one of the Mortein large 'Professional' spray kits of Surface Spray and spray every inch inside the house! Spiders love telescope mirrors to spin their webs across. Even when they are covered!!!

[bkm2304]

oh, and here's my friend the coal loader lurking around the corner from my house. Those coal heaps are maybe 50 feet high and you can just see the rotating bucket thingy moving out of frame to the left. The night time glow is monstrous!

[bkm2304]

Already done! Redbacks are the local arachnids here.

[ballaratdragons]

:eyepop: I can just imagine all the Coal dust landing on everything :eyepop:

[iceman]

Looks great, well done! I look forward to seeing it in person at Kulnura next week.

[h0ughy]

nice work, but from my research here is some advice, install a solar panel and a fan to ventilate the structure to regulate the moisture build-up and the scope cooler.

If you have rollers under the scope , how do you set it up with the Argo navis? Wouldn’t it move slightly?

[rmcpb]

Great, now for the ventillation!!

[casstony]

If the wind is from the direction of that coal I'd be keeping the mirror covered. Coal contains sulphur - mixed with dew you might have acids eating away at the coating. I live near an open cut mine and am a little paranoid about my mirror, so I use Baader turbo-film on the front of my 10" solid tube dob - probably not practical on a large truss dob. The scope and shed look like a military installation :)

[bkm2304]

Hi H0ughy,

Yes, good ideas. Where do I get a solar panel fired fan? Already I have had some moisture on the mirror while it sat idly in the shed.

Also the rollers can be chocked so they are pretty solid. If i gave it a good shove it would move. But it is about as stable as the LX200R which has no problems when I bump it or the dog moves against it. I'm looking atthe deep sky and am always very thankful the object of desire lands ANYWHERE in the field of my eyepiece!

Would like to hear about he fan thing though!

Richard

[bkm2304]

Yes, they do look like a weapon of mass ...... well I better not say it out loud. I also am a bit perturbed by the chemistry of the coal dust. I hope it has no effect but there is little I can do.