Mt Stromlo...what gives?

[Wavytone]

A little-known secret - there is another Oddie refractor which hopefully survives - it is a Thomas Cooke 4.5" f/16 refractor which was donated to Canberra Grammar School by Oddie possibly around 1936.
It has an exquisite mount made from phosphor bronze with a clockwork drive (with governor, like a miniature version of the 9" Oddie at Stromlo).

The scope was refurbished in the early 70's and had a concrete pad with a rolloff-shed up the back near the boarders' dormitories. The eyepiece end had a somewhat unusual diameter but with the help of some cork strips would hold 1.25" eyepieces. The original eyepieces were Ramsdens/Huygens and basically useless compared to a modern Kellner or ortho.

It was my first acquaintance with a decent telescope - it had text-book perfect optics BTW, many happy memories of fine views of the planets and star clusters, and subsequently the 9" Oddie at Stromlo.

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Originally Posted by Omaroo

Wow, one Mike... hold the beef. LOL

Still about 100kg there but a far cry from the 130kg of heavy lift meat at my peak in 2001...err and from the 142kg of mutton now...

[von Tom (Tom)]

Love the Oddie shot Mike. : ) I used the scope for a few secondary school lessons in the late '80s. So sad about the fire. Here's some nocturnal external photos from 1987-88. The first one is with Jupiter and the (then) Canberra sky glow in the background.

Cheers,

Tom

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Cool shots Tom...ahhh, those were the days...

Mike

[Wavytone]

A night with the Oddie circa 1973... I had it on most Monday nights - I'm standing at the left

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Originally Posted by Wavytone

A night with the Oddie circa 1973... I had it on most Monday nights - I'm standing at the left

That photo is great, so nostalgic, that soft orange light, I felt like I was back in the dome...made me yearn to return to those times ...the good'ol days where you did everything by hand...raw astronomy

Mike

[Wavytone]

Originally Posted by strongmanmike

raw astronomy

Not to mention the plate camera which I used, often, until one night I finally strapped my 8" f/7 Newtonian on top of the Oddie and used the Oddie as a very big guide scope...

[allan gould]

For your information there is another Oddie telescope in Australia
http://observatory.ballarat.net/features.html
I've had a look through it when I was in Geelong.

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Originally Posted by Wavytone

Not to mention the plate camera which I used, often, until one night I finally strapped my 8" f/7 Newtonian on top of the Oddie and used the Oddie as a very big guide scope...

Ah yes the Zeiss Camera, took 4X5 sheet film if I remember, my friend Attila took some shots with it in 1983, the year before I arrived in Canberra but without much real success, hence why we also strapped the Celestron 5 to the Oddie

We found the weight driven clock drive quite accurate but it had a periodic ~10" jump that was hard to catch and guide out every rotation.

Mike

[Wavytone]

Originally Posted by strongmanmike

Ah yes the Zeiss Camera

Originally quarter plates, usually 103aO for which it was designed for. The snag is, even then we were stripping the emulsions off used plates and recoating them by hand in the darkroom. Not exactly sharp at the best of times and the 20" focal length was pathetic when you had a whopping 9" f/16 to use as a guidescope.

Someone added a cut-sheet film holder shortly before I left Canberra but I suspect you may have had issues with this if you weren't using filters and refocussing to suit as the focal length varied a bit with wavelength, the optics were really an aerial photography camera (as was the MOTS but I digress)

The worst part was that the increasing sky-glow in Canberra meant that the f/5 20" camera hit the sky limit pretty quickly. Even in the 1950's it had hit its limit. My 20cm f/7 Newtonian made a whole lot more sense - the slower focal ratio meant a far lower sky brightness, and the all-reflecting optics meant perfect achromatism (so no filters) and it was razor sharp. Took some awesome shots of clusters and comets on fine grain film.

Re the dicky drive... it was superb when I used it but as I recall, a few years later one of the Stromlo staff (he should remain anonymous) had a bit of an incident one night and the drive was never the same afterwards, I think the worm shaft was bent. There was some talk about an electric drive but nothing happened... Not that the university really cared about fixing it, as the Oddie was only for high school kids and basic teaching anyway.

The other thing was that other groups used it on other nights so the drive was invariably out of calibration when I used it; so you really had to know how to set the governor accurately.

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Originally Posted by Wavytone

Originally quarter plates, usually 103aO for which it was designed for. The snag is, even then we were stripping the emulsions off used plates and recoating them by hand in the darkroom. Not exactly sharp at the best of times and the 20" focal length was pathetic when you had a whopping 9" f/16 to use as a guidescope.

Someone added a cut-sheet film holder shortly before I left Canberra but I suspect you may have had issues with this if you weren't using filters and refocussing to suit as the focal length varied a bit with wavelength, the optics were really an aerial photography camera (as was the MOTS but I digress)

The worst part was that the increasing sky-glow in Canberra meant that the f/5 20" camera hit the sky limit pretty quickly. Even in the 1950's it had hit its limit. My 20cm f/7 Newtonian made a whole lot more sense - the slower focal ratio meant a far lower sky brightness, and the all-reflecting optics meant perfect achromatism (so no filters) and it was razor sharp. Took some awesome shots of clusters and comets on fine grain film.

Re the dicky drive... it was superb when I used it but as I recall, a few years later one of the Stromlo staff (he should remain anonymous) had a bit of an incident one night and the drive was never the same afterwards, I think the worm shaft was bent. There was some talk about an electric drive but nothing happened... Not that the university really cared about fixing it, as the Oddie was only for high school kids and basic teaching anyway.

The other thing was that other groups used it on other nights so the drive was invariably out of calibration when I used it; so you really had to know how to set the governor accurately.

Yes I seem to remember a filter was necessary on the Zeiss to get sharp-ish images?

I also remember that story of the accident that stuffed the drive, huh, memories...yes, the drive was fine except for the jump.

The Newt sounds like it was pretty good...ahh the good'ol 8" F7 huh?...ah memories

Here's a closeup of the Zeiss (showing the big plate holder) and our Celestron5 and home made cold camera mounted on it

Mike

[torana68 (Roger)]

Originally Posted by Wavytone

A little-known secret - there is another Oddie refractor which hopefully survives - it is a Thomas Cooke 4.5" f/16 refractor which was donated to Canberra Grammar School by Oddie possibly around 1936.
.

hopefully its still around and not scrapped

[astroron (Ron)]

Fabulous thread fellas some great memories and images there
Cheers