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  #41  
Old 28-04-2022, 08:28 PM
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pmrid (Peter)
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Originally Posted by strongmanmike View Post
Bah!!...plenty of room!
Not quite. I managed to get everything going for a few hours tonight. What a relief. UNTIL it came to meridian flip time. I was hoping ASiair’s automated flip would work despite the narrow clearance with this scope. Nope. I could always do it manually of course but that defeats much of the purpose of the ASiair. If this OTA was about 100mm shorter, it would be fine. But it ain’t!

Bugger! So my 8inch newt will go back into the cupboard and I’ll go back to using my widefield rig - which will work just fine.

I might end up buying something like an 8 inch Celestron HD Edge or similar. I’m fairly sure it would be OK. Does anyone have one? Can you tell me how far back the focal plane is behind the back of the scope?
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  #42  
Old 16-05-2022, 12:31 AM
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pmrid (Peter)
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Well, this seems a fair compromise - a StellarVue 110mm F7. It’s close but at least it will do the meridian jig without crashing into something. Now for some sky!

EDIT: Cancel that. It’s still too long for my obs. Sooo frustrating.
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  #43  
Old 17-05-2022, 01:24 PM
gb44 (Glenn)
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Peter,
I had a small shed like that once and I housed a big newtonian in it with a GEM. I rolled the whole shed away and it was great -- you do have room to roll that shed away...
Maybe the back wall could become the door and some tie down points located in the slab.
A lot of work but then no constraints about the OTA you can house.
Just another opinion!
GlennB
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  #44  
Old 17-05-2022, 02:46 PM
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pmrid (Peter)
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Glenn, because I am an incurable tinkerer, I will think about your suggestions far too much for my mental health! But I will anyway!


Peter
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  #45  
Old 19-05-2022, 05:54 PM
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pmrid (Peter)
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OK! Finally got a good balance between total length of rig and the internal dia of the obs. The answer was I bought a SharpStar 94EDPH f5.5 triplet with a custom flattener/0.82Reducer that screws into the drawtube making it effectively a quatro (Petzval-like) system at f4.4. Good aperture, fast optics and very well corrected to 44mm image diameter and free of CA.

And so the forecast just went from bad to worse.
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Last edited by pmrid; 20-05-2022 at 08:25 AM.
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  #46  
Old 20-05-2022, 03:04 PM
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Bassnut (Fred)
Narrowfield rules!

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Its a shame you had to compromise, but thats a sweet scope!. It looks like you have a heap of scopes in stock now!.
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  #47  
Old 20-05-2022, 11:19 PM
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pmrid (Peter)
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Originally Posted by Bassnut View Post
Its a shame you had to compromise, but thats a sweet scope!. It looks like you have a heap of scopes in stock now!.
Ha!
In order to maintain domestic harmony, I work on the revolving door principle - scope goes out, new scope allowed in. Balance and harmony!

Mostly!
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  #48  
Old 16-07-2022, 02:37 AM
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pmrid (Peter)
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Originally Posted by Bassnut View Post
Its a shame you had to compromise, but thats a sweet scope!. It looks like you have a heap of scopes in stock now!.
Added a new member to the “heap” with this C11 - an older model but well cared for and it actually fits into my tiny obs. So I am set up for some galaxies and planetaries.
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  #49  
Old 09-11-2022, 06:25 PM
astrobarn (Dan)
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Fantastic work, really inspiring for improving domestic harmony.
Do you think you will add some form of automation to the open/close in future?
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