Quote:
Originally Posted by Startrek
John
Yes Don is a wealth of knowledge , he’s done just about everything in Astronomy , decades and decades of experience both in Australia and overseas
Martin
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What a lot of people don't realise is that Don is quite an accomplished telescope builder.
In the photograph attached the scope on the left is an 18"/F4.5 Obsession, 2nd to left is Gary Kopff (Wildcard / Argo Navis). In the middle is a 20"/F5 Don Whiteman / Mick McCulloch creation, with a superb Jerry Wilkinson Galaxy mirror, proudly known as "Hector". On the right hand side is a 25" / F5 Obsession and between the 25" Obsession and "Hector" is myself and my then 10 year old son Jake. Hector belongs to Andrew Murrell.
The photograph was taken in 2006. The 2 x Obsessions were pretty new. Hector was built in about 1992 and was 14 years old at the time of the photograph. During the first 14 years of its life, it was one of the most used telescopes on the planet, as can be seen by the varnish wearing off, which didn't affect it's performance. Hector has the distinction of being the instrument used by Andrew in discovering his planetary nebula (Murrell 1) in 2004.
As can be seen in the photograph Hector shares a lot of similarities of design with the classic Obsession style scopes, notwithstanding Don and Mick built it about 6 or 7 years prior to Dave Kreige releasing his book, "The Dobsonian Telescope".