A Special Observing Night

[Skylook123]

Once again, a terribly long time has elapsed since my last post.  But I have a very special form of outreach coming up December 19.  Oh, and I retire in four more working days, so I can finally get back to public outreach and astronomy, and look out!!

Friday night is one of our monthly club (Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association) observing nights at our site close to town, the Tucson International Modelplex Association (TIMPA), where in day time radio controlled aircraft are flown and we do two nights a month.  This will be a special night, for me anyway.  Almost two years ago, an amateur astronomer in Ajo, AZ knew me from Cloudy Nights, and she was moving out of state.  She lives in a camper on a mid-sized pickup, and with the move she did not want to take her 8" Orion Skyquest XT8 Classic tube dob. She said it needed some TLC, and she thought I'd be able to find a good home for it.  Some TLC was pretty close; the rocker box had a side broken off the attachment screws, she and some friends were using vice grips to collimate the spider, and the 9X50 finder had been mis-installed and would not collimate with the main tube, so she had taped a pull tab from a soda can to the finder mount as an aimer.

My grandson Stephen was visiting, and we tore it down and started the rebuild.  I got some angle braces from Ace Hardware to fix the rocker box, and pulled out the primary mirror to check it.  Not too bad, good enough to use.  When I took out the primary and its cell, out fell a screw missing from the secondary; so THAT'S why they used vice grips for collimating!  I hammered out the S-curves and bends in the spider vanes, installed the missing screw, and laser collimated the scope.  Piece of cake.  Took it out under the sky, and GORGEOUS views.  I was able use my Mallincam Jr. on it and take a couple of awesome moon shots and a beautiful Jupiter good enough to show two moons in the same shot as the image drifted across the screen. 

I hung onto it, because I knew who should get it but we could never match schedules.  I bought a small bulls-eye finder to take the place of the big finder that wouldn't align.   It took over a year to match schedules; good thing, because two nights ago I found the problem with the big optical finder.  It is the Orion two screws and a spring setup that doesn't allow enough range of motion.  I put a small shim at the front end, and perfect!

The young man I am giving it to is Aaron, a Navajo boy, now 14 years old, nuts about astronomy who so far has been only using small binoculars.  A Navajo coworker, his aunt, has custody of him.  At the club's support of David Levy's Sharing the Sky event on the University of Arizona Mall in 2013, I met him for the first time.  Within 10 minutes, he was doing tours with the visitors and my 18" Teeter.  Yeah, I knew who to donate it to. 

Well, we FINALLY have a time when the custody agreement that requires him to spend a lot of time on the reservation in Flagstaff allows us to get together, where he will take his early Christmas gift and enjoy the sky.  Although he has to spend a lot of time on the reservation in Flagstaff at over 8000 feet, he is an honor student at Tucson Magnet High School and just a great kid to be around.  Tomorrow at TIMPA he will find he has an augmentation to his small binoculars.  I can't wait to see his face when he finds out he's taking possession.

[Astro Imp]

Lovely heart warming story for this time of year.

Seasons greetings to you and Aaron and good luck on your retirement.

[jason.p]

I'd too would love to see the look on his face. What a beautiful gesture at any time of the year, but now, extra special!

It restores faith in human nature.

Seasons greetings to you and yours.

Jason

[Floater]

Power to you, sir.

[Skylook123]

Thank you all for the good feelings.  I guess I owe the universe the results of the exchange and practice.

The Tucson International Modelplex Association site is our club's "near town" dark sky site, last night was one of our club nights there, and that is where we made the exchange.  Last night at TIMPA was nothing like I expected, and I learned a lot.

First off, for over 15 years I've been using only computer or DSC configured telescopes, the last two years with live video imaging.  I thought it would be pretty easy to take Aaron through the basic mechanics of using the scope, since I, of course, am a resident expert in scope operations.  HAH.  As I heard long ago, it's what you learn AFTER you know it all that matters.

First off, I should have followed my initial instincts and removed the RACI finder and install the spare QuickFinder bulls-eye I have.  It was so awfully difficult to make use of that finder that I did better just with sweeps of the area.

Shellee and Aaron got lost trying to get to TIMPA, so it was about sunset when they got there.  Since the collimation cap really needs some daylight to function, I used the waiting time to collimate the finder and the main scope.  Surprisingly easy, since it was the first time I ever used the cap, not a laser collimator. 

Finding things was complicated by the basic feature of the SkyQuest in that it has very strong springs to maintain balance and hold the optical tube into the rocker box.  My last checkout of the scope was just a few objects in very hot summer so the springs were not too tight.  Movements were not too bad.  Last night, it was quite cold, and it made the elevation movements very stiff, very hard to do precision pointing.  I unhooked one spring after about 90 minutes, and the movement was much better.  We were actually able to find some nice objects.  But to make this scope useable, it will take a useful finder.  Don't get me too wrong; take out this monster and put it on a camera tripod and it's a nice little 9X50 instrument to enjoy large FOVs.  But it was not great to learn with combined with the jerky motions in the cold.

We did Albireo, Double Cluster, and about five other objects I found by knowing where they were.  We tried Andromeda, but it was up in Dobson's hole and the sticktion in the movements, combined with being underdressed for the cold, left patience way out of the game.

Surprisingly, the tube and base took up a lot of space in the SUV as they left.  I think Aaron was overwhelmed by the acquisition, but it will be fun working with him and bring the scope into a more useable state.  All we need is to replace the RACI with a QuickFinder (I had a spare and included it and the attachment tape in the equipment box I gave them, along with spare 9mm, 10mm, 12mm, 16mm, 25mm, and 32mm Plossls I had for years), release the springs, and add some ballast if it needs it without the heavy RACI.  Or reattach one spring. 

Progress was made, Aaron has his instrument, and we have a little tweaking to do but the views in that scope were freaking amazing.  It was nice to drop from the 2540mm focal lengths and computer/DSC driving and tiny FOVs in the video monitors I'm used to, down to 1200mm and a 32mm Plossl and the beauty of manual searches.  Both elements of the Double Cluster in the same view.  Wow.  And it took me only two hours to get back to real astronomy from the computer driven video display universe I am now welded to. 

Now I have a few more square feet in the garage.  Don't tell my wife Susan; I know she'll have plans for it.

After Shellee and Aaron left, I went over to yak with the guys at our permanent 14" LX200  and enjoy the big scope views as object after object was only a few button pushes away. 

As I left, I was thinking about the effort needed to finish off the 8", and how much fun it was to not have to spend 30 minutes taking down a scope, mount, cameras, monitor, batteries, and cable after cable after cable.  And those wide fields looking at the area around the Summer Triangle, and around Perseus and Cassiopeia.  Good old fashioned astronomy.  Not bad at all.

[Astro Imp]

Love it, great write up.

Keep us updated on progress of Aaron and the scope.

[Skylook123]

Thanks, Alan.  Aaron is up in Flagstaff for the next two weeks for the school break, then I hope we can make progress when he returns.