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Me and Frankenstein's telescope

RLWP

By RLWP
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RLWP

RLWP

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It's all the Sky at Night's fault, that and the eclipse

I have been able to pick out the odd planet and one or constellations for ages and often wondered about the rest of all that shiny stuff. Then along comes the eclipse, and lovely advice on how to view it - so i dug out the Tasco scope I must have had over forty years and did some projections onto a sheet of card. Wow - a sunspot!

Hmm, what about this Jupiter thing then - so out with some (very) cheapo binoculars and - Wow! Moons!

So, I went mad and bought a Tesco Galaxsee telescope of Ebay for £9.50... Hmm, better views of the moons of Jupiter. A bit fiddly, so I did some googling and bought a 25mm Plossl lens. Now I could see Jupiter and it's moons better

The mount was a bit rattly though, so I made a new ring to replace the trunnions and made a new pivot for the mount.

And this is where it all got out of hand. I bought an equatorial mount off Ebay with no legs. Then I bought an ancient Prinz 550 of Ebay for £9.50 (plus postage). Then I had a bit of a think and a fiddle. I'm an engineer, and I have a workshop, with bits of metal in it...

Telescope.jpg

The legs are from a scrap display banner frame

Label.jpg

The colours of the scope are misleading. Well, daubed on would be a better description. I think it used to be white with grey castings and chrome tubes.

Label-2.jpg

The Circle K mark. Some of the eyepieces are Circle T

The mount is mostly as bought, topped off with a bit of plate and the Prinz scope bracket. The blue ring is to stop the scope sliding into the mount when I rotate it to bring the finder scope to the top

mount-1.jpg

The bottom part:

mount-2.jpg

Home made tee screws. The chain is from a fly screen found in a skip

All in all, on the two scopes, mounts and eyepieces I think I have squandered invested spent £80

I could do with some advice on cleaning the eyepieces and diagonal. It's possible the prism in the diagonal is past recovery though - I get a hazy image in the centre of the eyepiece

Next step - I would like to learn to find things in the sky. I can view the moon, current planets, big stars (Capella, Arcturus, etc.). I could really do with someone to help find other things, Messier objects for instance

Anyway, enough waffle. The Moon will be visible soon

Richard

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damnut

damnut

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Hi Richard,

Warm welcome to SGL..That's some metal bending you have done. Looks pretty good to me. To keep your eyepieces and diagonal clean, invest in a bottle of Baader wonderfluid and a microfibre cloth.

Enjoy the forums and the fruits of your hard work.

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Toxophilus

Toxophilus

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Hi Richard,

Welcome to SGL. My first telescope was a Tasco. My parents bought me it for Christmas one year. That was the start of my squandering investments. Expect to invest a lot more (money and time) when the bug really bites.

Good luck

Mark

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RLWP

RLWP

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Thanks guys. I have dipped in here a few times to find helpful advice, I thought it was time I gave something back

Hi Richard,

Warm welcome to SGL..That's some metal bending you have done. Looks pretty good to me. To keep your eyepieces and diagonal clean, invest in a bottle of Baader wonderfluid and a microfibre cloth.

Enjoy the forums and the fruits of your hard work.

I'll go and buy some, I've seen the Baader mentioned before

Hi Richard,

Welcome to SGL. My first telescope was a Tasco. My parents bought me it for Christmas one year. That was the start of my squandering investments. Expect to invest a lot more (money and time) when the bug really bites.

Good luck

Mark

I'll dig out the little Tasco and photograph it for nostalgia purposes Mark

Hello and welcome Richard. You're putting together some pretty neat stuff for not much outlay.

Not much outlay is part of the fun. I now have three eyepieces I can comfortably use (plus a large handful of optical shrapnel), a prism diagonal and a sturdy equatorial mount that will take a bigger scope in the future. Oh, and several nights of entertainment so far

Richard

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Toxophilus

Toxophilus

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Hi

Stellarium is great software (free) to help find stuff up there.

I use Stellarium and its fairly light and easy to navigate. Its usually my first choice if I want to quickly check something out that I have seen or want to observe

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Plouer

Plouer

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Hi Richard

Welcome to SGL, amazing what you can do when you know how. would suggest you get back on ebay and get cheap pair of Binoculars it's a great way to find your way around the sky.

Peter

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RLWP

RLWP

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Thanks guys

Hi
Stellarium is great software (free) to help find stuff up there.

I use Stellarium and its fairly light and easy to navigate. Its usually my first choice if I want to quickly check something out that I have seen or want to observe

I have Stellarium installed on my PC. It's great for getting an idea of what will be around, and it is on a PC in the house. I'm not finding it useful when there's just me, the sky, my scope and the challenge of locating Messier objects. I think I need to find a local club.

Hi Richard, welcome to SGL :)

A Prinz 550 was my first scope back in the early '70s. seeing that brings back memories. Mine was white though.

Yeah, mine was white too - it's there under the heavy coat of badly applied blue paint! I'm torn between restoring the Prinz and maintaining the 'Rat-Scope' look

Anyway, going back a bit, here is the mighty Tasco Asteroid!:

Tasco-1.jpg

It has it's original all metal alt-az mount with solid metal legs, but has unfortunately lost it's anti-vibration feet (rubber ones, they rotted)

I thought it was just a TSO (Telescope Shaped Object), yet it seem the optics may not be too bad:

Tasco-2.jpg

Tasco-3.jpg

Circle K

And the 25x-50x zoom lens:

Tasco-4.jpg

Anyway, back to the Frankenscope. I have these optics I can easily use:

useful-stuff-1.jpg

useful-stuff-2.jpg

And a handful of shrapnel for throwing at telescopes in the hope of seeing something:

Shrapnel.jpg

The lens (bottom right) has come adrift from something in one of these two images. I found it screwed to the top of the Barlow lens after doing some observing. It must have come unscrewed from the bottom of something, I can't work out what. Any ideas anyone?

Richard

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glowjet

glowjet

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 Hi Richard and welcome to SGL. My you have been busy, excellent job in restoring that old telescope. your circle T Kelner eyepieces, come from a long established optical workshop in Japan manufactured by the old retired lens maker Mr Tani, famous for his circle T Orthoscopics. The rest are super Ramsden and Huygens from a bygone age, superseded by the plossl and many other better optics now currently available.

As you think your diagonal is suspect, have a look at AstroBoot, last time I looked a few days ago, they had a new .965" old fitting diagonal at a reasonable price. Finding targets to observe in the night sky comes with practise. Star hopping, as it is called, is achieved using star maps, a siting device mounted on your scope, such as an RDF (red dot finder) or an optical finder scope. Calculating the field of view of your eyepiece/scope, it is possible to superimpose a circle marked on a piece of clear plastic sheet or even wire rings made to the scale of your map, using these you can plot your way to your chosen object. Very enjoyable and at times frustrating, but it is all part of enjoying your Astronomy  :)

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RLWP

RLWP

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Thanks again guys. Astroboot - that looks like a dangerous place! I can feel squandering an investment coming on...

I'll have a look for Turn Right at Orion, it sounds like what I need next to help find my way around

It's good here, innit

Richard

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BobSki

BobSki

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Hello Richard and a very warm welcome to the forum, I'm sure you'll have a great time with your hobby and also with your new friends on this wonderful forum.

It might be Frankenstein but it's better than what I have :smiley:

All the best

Bob

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Toxophilus

Toxophilus

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Will do. I escaped from Astroboot eventually, £16 lighter (red dot finder, hybrid diagonal and a pair of binocular prisms...)

Richard

I've managed to pickup some real gems from astroboot in the past and save myself quite a bit in the process.

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