What a carton of beer can get you.

[batema (Mark)]

Thanks to my manual arts friends at school and two caravan gas cylinder holders I'm ready for the easter break. Our schools 12 " DOB will be mounted on my EQ6 pro this weekend to hopefully do some imaging of Saturn and Jupiter using our 2.5 x teleview and 840 Toucam. Still working on our head of department for maybe a DMK. Fingers crossed.

Mark

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

What a carton of beer can get you

God I remember those days. The days of the FO. Productivity and general moral was so much higher once upon a time, when you could get a carton for something that would be a nothing job to you, or pay a carton for something you could never do in your lifetime.

Fantastic Mark. Great to see the old days are still alive and well!!!! And you get a great imaging setup to boot.

[marki]

Best and most stable currency in the world. Perhaps we should give the aussie dollar the flick and switch to the aussie slab .

Ps. I am also trying to get some astro gear for my school but bugger the middle management, go straight to the principle I reckon .

Mark

[batema (Mark)]

Our principal is onto us to the point that when he appointed a new head of department one of the first statements he made to him was "not to buy anymore astronomy gear for Adam and Mark". It only took us three months before he bought us the 12 " DOB. I hope he is not a member of this forum.

Mark

[marki]

Originally Posted by batema

Our principal is onto us to the point that when he appointed a new head of department one of the first statements he made to him was "not to buy anymore astronomy gear for Adam and Mark". It only took us three months before he bought us the 12 " DOB. I hope he is not a member of this forum.

Mark

We got them to build us a 3 story high viewing platform in the last round of school expansion projects. Now I am going for the fully automated observatory. Reckon I might get it by 2015 (I am very persistent)

Mark

[GTB_an_Owl (Geoff)]

my brother up at Tabulam tells me a story of the local council paying him for (think it was ) shale off his property to do the roads up there.

said he would sit out the front and watch the trucks go by (and count)
2 cartons of tooheys - 4 cartons of tooheys - 6 cartons of tooheys

and to boot, he ended up with dams where they took the shale from

geoff

[Scooter]

Hey Batema - the rings look great so let me know how you go with them over the break. Any chance you can weigh them for me? I would be interetsed in knowing how much they weigh so I can get an idea how they compare against my wood and metal rod DIY job. Whilst I don't have scales to use I just quickly checked the weight using a balance setup and I reckon my cradle weighs 4.2kg (that was with the dovetail as well but it weighs stuff all).

That seems pretty high IMO so I guess so if your setup is lower I could look at something similar or seeing how you have proof of concept sorted maybe you could take a commision (do they want another ctn of beer )?

What did the caravan holders set you back? Like I said let me know - would be interested in knowing as I could do with cutting the weight on my EQ6

[Glenhuon (Bill)]

The dollar may devalue, but Kimberley Currency stays stable.

Bill

[batema (Mark)]

12 " Mounting Rings
Hi Scooter,

I originally read one of your posts when you were puting together the wooden frame. A friend of mine told me that the large gas bottle holders will make good mounting rings so off I went. The caravan rings cost about $28 each, I already had a spare dovetail and the manual arts boys put it together in 2 days. The size rings I got are the largest however the boys had to weld an extention piece as they would not go around straight from the shop.
All up I weighed them this morning and they come to 3.55Kg.

Foul weather up here on the sunshine coast so I have not put it on the mount EQ6 Pro as well. I wonder how many weights you used to balance this monstrosity. I can see problems with me grabbing 2 x 10 Kg weights from the Gym at school in the sense of them catching on the legs. Also we are only really going to video moon and planets but I saw you had some shots of Nebula. Did you move the location of the mirrors as it is my understanding that for a Canon 400d it will not reach focus. I would love to photograph some DSO with this but as everyone says a mission to achieve.

We also take photos using a skywatcher ED 80. Fantastic scope and a little lighter than the 12 "

I will let you know how we go setting this up and take some photos of the rig for you but if you could let me know some of the questions above that would be great.

Mark

[theodog (Jeff)]

Originally Posted by batema

Our principal is onto us to the point that when he appointed a new head of department one of the first statements he made to him was "not to buy anymore astronomy gear for Adam and Mark". It only took us three months before he bought us the 12 " DOB. I hope he is not a member of this forum.

Mark

You think you have problems. I am middle management. I get "there are several telescopes up there (SSO)-arrange to use one of them", whenever I ask for telescope funds for the faculty.

We are the Astronomy Capital of Australia, & we have a 4" reflector -govt issue 60's/70's.

I just use my gear.

[Scooter]

Thanks for that batema

At 3.5kg they would save me some weight so could be worth looking at. For whatever reason I thought they might come in lighter. Be interesting to see how you reckon they go (stability etc.) as they looked like pretty solid gague stock. Potentially using a lighter gague might be possible to reduce more weight and most of the designs I have seen have the rings directly onto the dovetail (you have welded that plate to the bottom of the ring) so that would shed a little more.

As you said I did the DIY wood jobby (pics are in one of my previous posts somewhere) and it does the job so I left it at that. Sure I could cut the weight heaps by getting rid of the top and using compression straps etc. but then not sure of the stability. Guess it will allways be a compromise

For weights I use the original 2 x 5kgs, then I have 2 x Yok 5kgs (these are great as they are squat) and lastly 2 X Kmart 5kgs (flatter thus not as sqaut as the yorks). So total of 30kg hanging off the mount. Seemed like a lot to me and I know I did ask the question but not sure I got a response one way or the other. Seems to work OK.

Mirrors I have NOT moved. Just use a 2x Barlow so from that perspective easy as. Bumps up the FL but and most have commented that makes it harder but hey, it was enough to get me started. I plan to take about 25 mm off the end of the tube so I get a wider FOV (because of not needing the 2x barlow) but just havn't gotten around to it. This should be easy and should allow me to use the DSR and EP's. Worst case would be needing an extension for visual EP's so that was easy as well.

To get an idea of what I could capture with the camera and scope and 2x barlow I used CCD Calc ( http://www.newastro.com/book_new/camera_app.php get the extra images as well).

Being Brissy based the weather has been shocking so haven't been out much and I think the last couple of times have just been the D90 on the mount but here was a couple of extra quick single frame D90 shots through the 12" and 2xBarlow. Haven't really mastered drift aligning (just haven't had time at the scope) so these are really short exposures (20-30 sec's) but might give you an idea what a newbie can acheive after only a couple of outings (so no I don't reckon difficult to acheive).

At the moment I am still having a play and happy doing that (although lately haven't been out). I am thinking I might get an OFG, Guide cam and maybe a ED80 (as a portable scope plus a WF imager). Let me know how you go when you get your rig out.