Peter Drew

I would lay the scope down on its side so that the detatched baffle is halfway down the tube. If you can arrange it such that the front end is overhanging a table you should be able to get a good grip on the front cell to unscrew it, mine comes off fairly easily. 

You don't need to remove the corrector from its cell, the whole cell unscrews and will screw back on retaing the orientation of the optics. As mentioned, the baffle is glued on concentric to the aluminised spot.  

This isn't the secondary mirror, it's the secondary baffle which is normally glued to the inner face of the corrector lens. The secondary is an aluminised spot on the inner surface of the corrector. The whole front cell should unscrew and then you can retrieve the baffle and carefully glue it back on. Don't let the detatched baffle rattle around on the primary mirror as it will scratch the coatings. 

Complete with early dongle.  

The same principle is used in many geared focus mounts but kudos in successfully making such a precision component yourself!  

Good job!. Nice to see Ampthill mentioned, I moved up North from Park Hill, Ampthill, good memories.  

A S/H 4" F10 Vixen OTA.  

The idea seems good in principle but at a distance of 30m how could you guarantee that the artificial array is square on to the camera? Stars at infinity presumably must be.  

I'm not well off (financially!) but I can afford to pay to have a pilot fly me to Tenerife, albeit with a couple of hundred others at the same time.  

16 hours ago, rl said:

SGL have not seen fit to offer an "react" emoticon for envy...

No need, why do you think that Taks are in green? 

You have to be well off to do either.   

There certainly is a learning curve with Ha viewing, I've been doing so for over 15 years and still finding techniques for improvement! 

Oops!, plus a picture of my grandaughter serenading us, posted in error. 

My 8.5" F12.5 refractor.

They were built for terrestrial use and I didn't get much of an oppotunity to try it out astronomically. I recall that Jupiter looked pretty detailed with little CA. The terrestrial views were amazing, excellent resolution at 20 miles range, would have loved it myself!  I hope it still exists and used somewhere.   

Fancy these round your neck? . They are the largest refracting ones I've yet made. I custom built them about 25 yeas ago from a brand new ex Gov pair of 8" F25 aispaced achromats. I had to fold each side with flats to reduce the physical length and incorpoate focal reducers to achieve a more manageable F12.

3 minutes ago, 25585 said:

I can  just see they are f7 on the board to right. What is the maker please? Can you change eye pieces?

They were made by Steve (mechanics) and Brian (optics), members of Bolton AS. 

1 hour ago, Scooot said:

I did wonder ? Not far off the fov of the Nikon WX. Very ingenious! ? What about the objective lens?

A bit cheaper than the WX ! The objectives are from a cheapo 10x50. The eyepieces are Meade 24.5mm Superwides which ramps the cost up a bit but I already had them. I was motivated to make them following a moan on CN that there were no small binoculars with 90 degree angled eyepieces. I have to say that the performance greatly exceeded my expectations and underlined the benefit of mounting even small binoculars.   

@Richard.   Self built.   

Here is one of my smaller ones. 8x50 with 8.5 degrees FOV.  

More pics. The OTA's are modified SW Startravels. Each one has a 3" minor axis  diagonal to start the 90 degree angle followed by pairs of diagonal prisms for IPD adjustment. Each OTA is sprung loaded with adjusters to quickly perfect the collimation. The mount is a simplified version of the TTS Panther mount. Not had chance to try them on the night sky yet.

My latest 150mm F5 binocular telescope.

How much or your local seeing?  

Is your house up for sale Mike?, we are seeing a lot of the interior and the garden.    

Well regarded achromats in the small range are anything by Vixen F10 and longer, also the venerable Tal 4" F10. Other 4" long focus achromats also have a good reputation. The common theme is long focus, however once you get up to 6" aperture and above, the potential performance is a trade off against the mounting problem. With the current popularity of APO's there is little incentive for manufacturers to service a niche market. I've made a number of 6" and 8" F20  folded achromat  refractors, they work very well but despite the relative compactness they still required a substantial mount.