Looking great! I take it the OTA can rotate to assist in chasing the eyepiece around?
Hi Jethro,
Yes the top half of the tube assembly rotates but at the cost of collimation. I tend to bend my neck a bit rather than rotate the scope. Most of the time I have the G Star Ex camera attached so I observe from the screen. Of the G Star Ex on this scope, I've said before that while the pics aren't pretty, they sure are capable of showing really, really faint objects even in a single 2.56 sec. frame. Great stuff for comets and supernova hunting which is what I intend to do once set up. The camera has proved itself to be excellent for this purpose in the light pollution of the suburbs and I am hoping for an extra magnituide - or even two! now I'm in a pretty dark site.
shes coming together beautifully i cant wait to see her finished , you got a name for it yet?
Hi Nicholas,
I posted a while back some cynical names like "Richard's Folly". I have started naming the telescopes I have and in fact my call sign, BKM2304 is the name of a very nice 10" Meade ACF I had a while ago. To decipher - B = Comet Bennet the first comet I ever saw in 1971, K = comet Kahoutek the comet I looked for but couldn't find in 1973, and M for Murakami a colleague in Japan who discovered visually comet Snyder - Murakami in 2002. The 2304 is the postcode of Mayfield an inner suburb of Newcastle where I lived.
I promise I won't be so obtuse this time and I'll let you know! But the naming will involve a nice drop of champagne!
The gores (the orange slice segments you need to cut to cover a dome) are going up with a little persuasion. The dome is rotating finally after MUCH consternation and fiddling. The rollers which were hardened rubber just couldn't take the load so we have finally lobbed on sliding the whole thing on a metal to metal sled. Miraculously, it slides really smoothly (!), although a more accurate system is needed if ever I want to automate it.
The pics show the gores up so far and the galvanised sheets on the ground are awaiting placement after tracing and cutting of each gore (each segment is unique!).
Looking good, however i would make a recomendation that you use some sort of foam or cloth attached to the metal walls to prevent noise, and you will get heaps of it !!.
You must REALLY be hanging out..
Sorry mate, just rubbing it in a little, cause it must be killing you to be so close to finishing..
Hey Theo,
You're right about the hanging out bit. And she is a bit noisy when you rotate her. We are finishing off the roof and on Sunday the scope goes in and it's alignment time!
I can't wait to get a look at the sky up here
Richard
I have finally finished the dome. I had to wend my way through a wedding (mine), honeymoon (mine also), weather (God's) and work (they're the bankrollers).
I have used foam sheeting to cover the gap between the dome and the base. Rather than have an "Overhang" style of covering I have chosen to do the opposite, namely to run foam from the base to the INSIDE of the rotating dome such that the water and wind and dust are deflected downwards to the base of the structure. It works very well indeed. The dome rotates on 8 hard rollers from the boating store - they are used on trailers, and after some teething and running in issues, I can, most of the time, rotate the quarter tonne dome easily and almost silently- WD40 is wonderful stuff!
The scope is aligned well and can slew from park (about 10 deg above the northern horizon) to, Rigel Kentaurus with an accuracy of about 10 minutes of arc plus or minus. It is more accurate abviously for shorter slews.
I will be fitting an SBIG STL-11000M-C2 Self-Guiding camera soon and will be getting stuck into some long exposures.
Looks good. I see you picked silver as the color for the scope and mount..
I would also be using it visually too. I remember some great views thru it..
Finished!! (For now...)
