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finished android nichrome wire heater

Heating my 21mm Baader Hyperion

Corrector heater installed

finished corrector heater

finished diagonal heater

star diagonal heater

I finally received enough of the parts for my DIY dew control system to begin making the first one.

I hear of lots of people getting guitar chairs and drum thrones and there are other adjustable chairs out there. none of them have more than 10 inches of adjustibility. Guitar chair is 21 to 31 inches. that will not work for your SCT which you can set up and work out what the travel from zenith to horizon is and where that will place your eyepiece. Then you will see what range of adjustment you'll need and work from that point. observing chairs that fit the scope without excess capacity will almost always be a custom design you make yourself. This chair I made is inexpensive, safely modified to avoid pinching and spills, and really works unlike many of the designs I've seen on the net. The adhesive non-skid strip idea is bad. It fails in less than a week for me. The chair will not work without it and so the glue sand on the a-frame both sides is an excellent and inexpensive mod. The extra lag screw to prevent the aluminum bar notch from coming off the bolt and laying you flat on your back was another necessary design change in my opinion making my friction based Denver observing chair superior to any I've seen of that particular design.

Before I modified the aluminum bar securement system I had decided the pinch point of picking the a-frame up by the apex was unacceptable and put this handle on to make it easy to avoid that.

Here you can see into the DIY Dew Shield. Note, I sewed black felt into it inside because the extra surface area of the felt will improve it's dew blocking ability as well as preventing some of the dust from getting on the lens since the felt is an attractant to that as well.

Here you can see that I sewed a piece of foam normally used by campers under their sleeping bags. It's stiff enough and rather than using velcro I cut the piece with a slight angle to achieve a cone effect to avoid vignetting so this allows it to get wider rather than trying to keep it the same diameter and then be able to see it in the FOV.

On the nice flat rick I set everything on in my backyard when I observe you can see my DIY dew shield / lens shade and my music stand for my notes and sketching.

I have a friend that likes to take pictures. This was done using his Canon T1i Rebel DSLR.

It is amazing how much more you can see using an eyepatch to achieve dark adaptation in an urban, Bortle 6 to 7, backyard.

With a black t-shirt pulled the wrong way over my head as a light blocking hood, I do appear to be some kind of sith lord astro pirate

Here I am with my new telescope, observing chair, and quite happy about it.

pointing at zenith I have plenty of clearance

In order to avoid vibrations I've built a simple motor focuser with a servo motor and belt drive.

To combat light pollution I have a telescope blind. To sensitize my left eye, I wear an eyepatch. It stays in the dark all night long unless it is looking through the eyepiece.

Celestron up Close 10 x 50 binoculars

This is part of the replacement for the adhesive non-skid strip. The non-skid strip failed within the week. I replaced that with sand glued on with waterproof wood glue. The original design called for a piece of rubber fuel line tubing to be nailed to the back edge of the seat assembly. This new design adds another piece of rubber tubing to the backside over the large bolt you see in the image above.

This actually failed one evening and I landed flat on my back. I was luckily not hurt but this was unacceptable to my thinking. So I installed a safety feature. A hand tightened lag screw that prevents the bar from backing off the main bolt. I just remove it to set the chair up, then replace the lag screw to lock the bar down. This mod has made this chair safe and quite securely usable in my opinion was one of two essential modifications. the other was the replacing of the adhesive non-skid strip with the waterproof glued sand on both sides.

Here is the finished Denver observing chair