Your Dream Scope?

[ballaratdragons (Ken)]

Originally posted by iceman
I like Starklers, that'd suit me too, except I still need to work so there's no point having a nice scope out in the sticks that I have to drive an hour to get to each night.

Or does this fantasy include living somewhere that you can use your scope from the backyard, and not having to work?

Ballarat is 1.5 hours from Melbourne and hundreds of people travel to work in Melb every day.

I am about 2 hours from Melb and some people out here travel to Melb each day too.

If you were serious about a dark spot you wouldn't have to stop working! I'm sure there must be dark spots to live within an hour or so of your work. That excuse didn't work, did it Mike. LOL

[Astroman (Andrew Wall)]

I would be happy with a 12" SCT on a GEM with some imaging equipment of some sort. Already got the observatory, so a bit of land near the flinders rangers will be on the cards.

Oh and a house there too. Nice cheap land and houses up there

[Starkler (Geoff)]

The thought behind my 100k plan is that a super-mega dream scope is a bit wasted operating from my backyard.
Its not easy to find a publicly accessable dark sky site so my plan includes buying one

[dhumpie]

My dream ""scopes"" would be a Starmaster Hybrid 14.5" f/4.3 truss dob with CZ mirrors as that is the largest scope I can use flatfooted and one of them 20x100 binoculars for comet hunting!

Darren

[ausastronomer (John Bambury)]

Ken,


Your way short with your budget, as someone else suggested you need 2 double it then add a zero on the end and then allow it in $US, $US 2,000,000 should keep me going

Powered site Dark Sky property with properly equipped observatory with appropriate electronics, kitchenette and sleeping quarters $US 200k


40" OGS Ritchey Chretien Main Scope $US 780k

8" Takahashi Flourite APO $US 170k

Cameras, Eyepieces and other
much needed accessories like
adaptive optics $US 200k

TOTAL COST $US 1,350k

And it looks like I have change out of my $2 mill to book a shuttle flight


Seriously for $AUS 100k I would set up a small dome observatory on a leased dark site housing a 16"/F5 equatorailly mounted newtonian with a 4" APO as a guidescope and have some change left over.

CS-John B

[ballaratdragons (Ken)]

LOL John, You'll need the change left over to stock your kitchenette with tucker! (don't forget the dunny paper either)

[tornado33]

I'd love to go to the main focus of the OWL telescope http://www.eso.org/projects/owl/index_3.html
...and put a 30mm Nagler on and look at things like the Proplyds in the Orion Nebula, the detail in the Humumclus Nebula in Eta Carinae, the Blue Planatary , Ghost of Jupiter, Ant nebula and so on. Imagine what you could see with a 100 metre aperature, with near diffraction limited resoloution thanks to the adaptive optices used. See http://www.eso.org/projects/owl/imag...Opt_design.gif
The scope is a monster, even the SECONDARY mirror is over 3 times the size of the Keck telescope. Just gotta wait for it to be built now hehehehe

[ballaratdragons (Ken)]

Wow! Can you imagine the diffraction spikes from the framework holding the secondary. That ain't no ordinary spider!