BabyPepper

1 hour ago, Louis D said:

Okay, all sorts of wrong here.

First, there's not enough volume in amateur astronomy sales to justify building a factory in the US.  If there was, Celestron and Meade would still be American made, owned and operated.  They had their own factories in the US, but there just wasn't the volumes at the necessary price points to support US manufacturing.

Second, Orion is unlikely to see a fraction of their judgement once Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization and appeals null out much of the judgement.  Certainly not enough to build an optics factory.

Third, the Chinese government has been dumping a lot of money into all basic industries.  It's very difficult for a purely profit driven company to compete against a heavily subsidized company.

Fourth, the US does have optical manufacturing capabilities in PerkinElmer and others.  However, pretty much all of their manufacturing goes toward military contracts and high-end corporate customers willing to pay big bucks for the finest optics available.  If you're willing to pay $4000 per eyepiece and $50,000 for a telescope, perhaps PerkinElmer might be able to enter the amateur astronomy market.  Until then, it's not going to happen.  There's just not enough profit margin to bother with.

Fifth, the Meade brand will reemerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy probably still owned by Sunny.  I'd be surprised if they were forced by the court to surrender the brand to Orion.  They'll be back as new-Meade much like new-General Motors 10 years ago.  Old-GM got stuck with all the old GM debts and union retirement commitments.

Sixth, Televue uses factories in Japan and Taiwan for lens grinding and assembly.  They do no business with the PRC because they would clone their designs and undercut them just as they did to Thomas M. Back and his TMB Planetary eyepieces.

Seventh, Sunny is the parent company of Meade, so any bankruptcy reorganization of Meade will have no effect on Sunny and any of their other customers including Lunt.  Meade was simply purchased to be a brand for Sunny's products in America and elsewhere in the Western world.

Eighth, Sunny products are not going anywhere.  Even if the court ordered the assignment of the Meade brand to Orion, Orion is still left with having to buy products from Sunny, Synta, Kunming, Long Perng, etc.  I have no idea if the court ruling does anything to prevent future collusion between the Chinese suppliers.  I doubt it, though.  All they can do is order fines or block products from being sold in the US.  The latter would pretty much shut down Orion's rebranding business.

Ninth, if you really want an American made telescope, buy from Astro-Physics, TEC, Teeter, Obsession, or PlaneWave.  If you want American made eyepieces, buy Brandon eyepieces from Vernonscope.

While not defending or arguing my opinion or others here, it has major validity.   ( i do admit i fell for the televue republic of china rumor)

Meade was not just a Telescope.  They had many military / communications industry contracts.  They have supplied  fiber optic relay elements for the last 20 years. Optics are optics. Not telescopes.       Everybody gets used for business equally, one company is not relied on unless an "exclusive contract" is written up.  In the most generic sense; Telescopes and eyepieces are just a by product of the optical industry, as are eyeglasses.     

This is going to have a ripple affect on the entire optical industry. I am certain.

I think there is a bit of speculation here, that telescopes  are some kind of special unique product?   They are not.  1/10wave flatness is 1/10 lamda in china, united states, mexico, and the moon.     You pay a manufacturer to make a product based on the instructions/specifications you gave them.    That is it.  There is no other process involved here.  If you use that optic for a telescope, well that is an option.   

.95 strehl, at 540nm is exactly the same to to the "high quality telescope maker astrophysics" as it is to the worst optic on earth.  If the worst optic on earth is still .95 strehl at 540nm, the astrophysics version is 100% identical.

The entire world has an "industrial standard", and it is followed by all industries.    The united states government is no different, nor the military.  If they want high precision optics made in china; its going to happen.  China has launched satellites into space for many years now. They are a nuclear power, and they are masters of all tool and die technology.  Precision optics are a cakewalk over there, but you still gotta pay for it to be done.     The united states has a very privatized optics industry, which is why there are no more american companies dedicated to telescopes.  This is only because the demand for telescope objectives does not exist.  Literally non existant, you want one you can find it anywhere in the world pretty much.

It is also a dying hobby, where skies are becoming less and less visible.

Likewise, you said it yourself. There are american companies making optics tailored to the purchaser, and this does not mean i cannot pay them to grind and coat a telescope objectives. Yet, these american companies are still limited by their equipment and customer demand.  Do you know how much it costs to shut down a factory for one piece, due to lost business from the guy with more money who wanted more parts?        (whole telescopes? doubtful)

Suddenly a $100.00 optic, becomes a $1500.00 optic.  You want a thousand?  Suddenly a $100.00 optic becomes a $25.00 optic.    The incentive is to always buy in bulk to ensure un-delayed operation 

Optical industry is not supplying tubes/focusers/baffles , so CVI / thorlabs / newport optics / will not build me a complete telescope no matter how much money i throw at them..... 

Astophysics is an american company that can not even turn out ten objectives a month, so the argument here again is that china has the equipment advantage and the whole world of private business knows this.  Its not that astrophysics is a high quality company, Its that they literally are a  tiny company making things one or two at a time to ensure that quality remains (the AP factory is 1 hour away from my house).   If they were to pump out 100 scopes a month, the quality is going to nosedive because compromises have to made to accommodate the new industrial scale.    

If i can build one- .99 strehl telescope objective per year and 10,000 people want that one objective, how much is that telescope worth? Who determins that price scale for supply and demand?

  This is when industry takes over for society , and dumps out thousands of equivalent part to provide the same level of enjoyment for the world. Not just that sole person who bought  the only telescope  produced by the tiny company that only gets 10 sales objective per year.       

Its about volume, and who can produce it cheaper. Thats how industrial contracts / government contracts operate. 

Orion did this to themselves and you can read the entire reasoning for it at company7.   The choice to use China was 100% based on manufacturing prices and suggested retail sale price.

http://www.company7.com/televue/news.html

Orion telescopes of California is a well regarded mail order oriented retailer whose ower came to realize that for its success Orion should rely less on companies run by people who probably knew less than he. And so Orion gradually picked up products and sometimes marketed these under the "Orion" trademark, or designed and commissioned items to be made for sale under their trademark. And Orion came to a agreement that until 2002 made it the distributor of Vixen telescopes in the U.S.A. Orion too faced the same problem of having a good Japanese made product that was not enjoying the demand that cheaper Chinese made telescopes. And even after the agreement between TeleVue and Vixen, Orion will continue to distribute the Vixen Lanthanum eyepieces, and the Vixen "Megaview" binoculars.

So although you might have purcahsed an orion/televue product in the united states, well it turns out after all the argument it was still a vixen optic.

1 hour ago, Rusted said:

Hi BP and thanks.

What do I gain with Virtual Dub?

Second question: What is that amazing telescope in your avatar?

That looks like a skeleton refractor top end with an internal D-ERF.

with virtual dub you can pre-process 100% of the frames of the video before dumping it into registax / imppg / pipp / autostakkert and extract literally 10,000% more detail.  (not an overestimation)     You can add false color to your raw data as well. Change gamma, change exposure. Stretch histogram. Basically 100% of everything you are already doing in photoshop / image editors.  Can do cropping too.  Video resizing/ upscaling.  Add labels, overlays, tags, earth scales.

Can overlay multiple videos on top of each other with transparency as well, along the lines of aligning calcium k-data withe hydrogen alpha data-   or white light data mergerd with both cal-k and h-alpha. 

Virtual dub is the future of all astronomy in my opinion, it can be tailored 100% to astro imaging.   It can even capture data right from the camera like firecapture/sharpcap. 

The skelescope you see in my avatar is exactly that   75mm D-erf,

i built it myself using all hand tools. 160mm x 1600mm -   No milling required, nothing precision at all. honestly i didnt even use a ruler or measuring tape. 100% eyeballed, proving that precision really does not mean too much (telescopes were handbuilt for two hundred years)   The scope utilizes an internal A-focal collimated Lunt Ls50c etalon.  I have custom h-alpha optics manufactured to achieve this,  (yes in china because nobody else in the world can supply them without a bank loan) 

You can see a bit more of my "Skelescope"  on  flickr.   I am in the process of making a step by step guide showing people how to build a successful truss systems for solar imaging.   (using the 17" mirror as an extreme example)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/163396781@N07/?

This is actually a prototype telescope that is in the process of being replicated by a very well known European telescope company, (with permission from me)

One of the best programs i have ever used for Image processing,  of all things is "Virtual Dub"  I use it on all of my data now, as the very first processing method.

  It does processing to the entire video, not just the single stacked frame.  

the only thing it does not do right now is align and stack, but it will in a future update.  But it will make your videos clear enough so that most of your registax registration errors stop.

Check it out!  It will never crash on your windows machine.     

 I can show you how to use it with two or three diagram images too, no tutorial required.  

http://virtualdub.sourceforge.net/

Personally, i think Orion should have allocated a large portion of their profit to purchase optics manufacturing equipment and not relied on another industrial nation to build their product.    This is happening right now with every nation in the world,   Most modernized countries get goods imported from china because that is where the heavy industrial technology is prominent.  Realistically how many companies in the UK have a lens grinder that can make a 102mm objective?  How many can make ten simultaneously?  Now how many can make 1000 equal optics in 30 days?    Well.  China is the only country that has the machines because that is where American CEO's dumped their money to build them in the last 40 years.  

This is 100% exactly why trump is putting all these sanctions on china.  A-lot of prominent American business has willfully allowed the accumulation of heavy machines in china(not in the business homeland) to the point where it supplies the whole world with industrial goods(ali-baba ring any bells).   It is the mere fact china has these machines in excess(more than they can operate), ready to go 24 hours a day. The united states does not. United kingdom does not.

Companies(like Orion) need to start investing in "homeland equipment" and train "homeland employees" how to operate it.      I live in the united states ,  and sadly but this is the truth.  60% of our business is not industrial, but food serving.  

So after Orion wins their millions of dollars in damages, what are they gonna do?   IF they are at all concerned about their future they would get the equipment they need.  But in all honesty think Orion is just going to take their money and willfully dissolve the corp. How could it be called an Orion telescope knowing that it was just a Meade or Celestron?  This is another problem in its own category to me.    Re-labeling/re-branding parts should be considered equally dishonest.    We do this all the time in the mattress world, why?  Because there are only 4 manufacturers of "foam" in the entire world.  So you get it in bulk, and re-brand it in your own country.  It is the reality of business.

 Televue is doing the same thing here guys. They have industrial scale lens operation's in china. CNC milling batches of their optics and coating them in China.     IS Televue also getting its optics supplied from Sunny optics? (Corporate secret's are protected by non-disclosure contracts and confidentiality clauses)    The company reputation would get severely damaged if that information became available.

Now,   I have some contracts, with "certain" optical companies that if I  were to post and share here, there is a good chance you would never purchase goods from that company ever again.  

Coronado solar scopes (used to be LUNT ENGINEERING) certainly is using Sunny optics!   So that means Coronado is also included in the bankruptcy as Meade is its parent corp.

The hardest truth to swallow here is that Industrial china was built by every nation, equally. Now that china has their foot inside every home and business in the world, it is upsetting world leaders.

 Mattresses, TV's, chemicals,  cellphones, toys,  plastics, polymers, fabrics.   EVEN YOUR DISH SOAP!

It may be a good thing if Meade goes extinct , perhaps it will be an end to their over produced achromatic doublets?     Higher quality optics(ed glass only) may have the opportunity to accumulate in the market, increasing the supply and lowering the demand.

IT sounds harsh, but hey.  Life is hard when somebody changes the rules in the middle of it.

8 hours ago, michael.h.f.wilkinson said:

It is not just the silver on the mirror, it is all the equipment you need to actually silver a mirror, the money required to buy and maintain the cnc machine, etc. The actual cost of the sand from which the silicon used in your CPU is made is nothing whatsoever, but I can see why the CPU itself costs quit a bit more.  Being in the hobby for 40 years, I have seen the prices of telescopes fall (even when not taking inflation into account), and the quality and diversity of optical equipment go through the roof at the same time. I own not one but several Fabry-Perot interferometers for H-alpha solar imaging which would have cost a fortune when I started out. The same holds for my Ca-K kit. The choice, performance and quality of eyepieces has skyrocketed since I started (when a quality Plossl or Ortho was about the best you could get here). Quality optics have never been more affordable.

This is not to say certain companies mightn't be playing nasty trick on us, but we should not tar the entire industry with the same brush

yes those magentron sputtering machines are super expensive and ion beam sputtering is literally the most cutting edge technology on earth.  Obviously not something that average joe 50 years ago could use or even afford.  But now adays all those filters come from a machine where the "doctor" type in a formula on a control panel, which add's said formula to its memory, then the doctor literally press start like a microwave oven in your kitchen.  After all it uses the same parts from a microwave, just custom engineered for its purpose...    In all seriousness, once a company discovered its first successful  coating formula, this gets stored in the computer memory forever permanently until you update it to be more efficient, faster or just better.   You can watch step by step videos of a cvd machine, or ion assisted sputtering machine and exotic coating operations in progress at these facilities too they are not hiding anything.          

Those sputtering targets alone cost as much as a car,!

However on the most basic level here is the silvering or aluminizing process;  a pressure cooker modified with a food sealer and a tungsten filament could coat a silver mirror with the most basic middle grade school education and tool skills    (provided the child is disciplined/supervised well enough)   Coincidently silver itself was rigged on the world market as well(multiple times), which also made headline news. 

Ive seen these market rigging / monopoly scandals in the headlines news since the 90s when all the (chinese)factories fixed the price of random access memory chips.  (remember when 4mb used to cost $4000.00? they got caught too)

And now just A couple days ago a major tuna canning corp(bumblebee) also busted rigging the tuna market.  

Yes its most likely all markets in my opinion.   

To me, its just business as usual.  I work in the matress industry.  Another market that is 100% price rigged.         This is literally an every day business practice to ensure the company has a 100 year future, and the only thing business owners care about is that their competition goes away.   IF your business plan has  enterprise which  is too efficient for society itself, well thats a monopoly.      

Not arguing here, just good conversation!  

I would surely hope that you guys know about Lunt Engineering and APM?   IF not https://astromart.com/forums/vendors/coronado-lunt-daystar-solar-filters/lunt-engineering-start-up-58261?page=1#post148876

Business as usual.   

pick up a basler camera, they are python right of the box and include the SDK.

I love image processing and would love to see what you add to the field.  I recently discovered a different way to process solar images, so i know that there are tons of tricks waiting to be unlocked.  Especially at the camera data output before it hits the SSD.      

The reality of the situation, is that technology is here already that can instantly process the video signal on the fly     , and the neural network thing paired with an nvidia gpu for parallel processing. Well this can delete the blurry pixels  instantly to only record and rebuild the best data.  Its powerful enough and smart enough to stack on the fly as well..

the fine detail is certainly real and yes you captured it

It looks like you may need to adjust the -200mm on your pst collimator a little bit however.  That 150mm objective should be roaring out some smoking hot raw data with that 174 sensor.

You can pop the collimator section off the front of the  etalon cell (the two larger spanner notches on the outside perimiter, not the smaller one around the optic), and this is a standard telescope 48mm filter threads.  Just use a standard tube extension to get deeper in the tube without cutting it. 

  <--- you should be seeing something like without processing.

The conspiracy is not limited to meade. This is testament to the entire optical industry, china got fingered and caught merely because they are the focus of world political relations right now.   

Every market in the entire world is rigged with the curse of "suggested manufactures retail price", there is no question about it.        

*coughBaader planetariumcough*.   *coughnikkon* *coughcannon*  

13 cents worth of silver on a mirror =  an 8000% markup.   Pressing a start button on an automated cnc type machine = 10,000% markup.   Oh man does the OPTical filter industry have the "gimme all you got" curse big time.....  

6 hours ago, xtreemchaos said:

cool that's a big mirror mate your going to need a big ERF for that☀️, would you like to see what I get with 102mm ?. link in sig. watch you don't hurt your back lifting that mirror buddy. welcome to SGL. charl.

You have a nice collection of images,  looks like your quark operates well.

I am currently limited by a very low quality camera, however it what it lacks in picture quality it makes up for in high speed.  It captures 750 frames per second at 640x480.    Thats typically all that matters with planetary/solar imaging.

However, the age old rule still applies;  Junk input = junk output...

The mirror is not too heavy, maybe 12 kilos.    When I get done building the truss, the complete telescope will weigh about 18kilos total including the focuser.     

I developed The ERF system myself, and it is only 90mm in diameter.  The mirror itself, is customized and was was chosen based on its thermal properties to support the full thermal load of the sun.   Its basically a huge chunk of quartz.

Thank you for the welcome!

Having a 1.6 meters aperture solar telescope would be great; wouldnt it?   But as an amateur it really does seem like there is not much of a gain in going above 180mm!  Here is an example where an amazing bit of similar detail was captured while using just 160mm of aperture. Compared to the 1.6 meter big bear observatory;     

Now this does not happen too often, and one interesting point to note is they have optics which  cost in excess of 100 million US dollars;  Mine did not exceed $3000.00

I started off with just 35mm of aperture; 10 years ago...

Thanks for looking!

Hmmmm,  I wonder what I will capture with my new 0.44-meter mirror  (a ton of atmosphere!)

Sometimes making your own "compromised parts" is a great solution!    https://www.amazon.com/Aluminum-Weld-Tube-Ends-Bungs/dp/B07C86Q52K

If you can figure out the correct identification of the "base part" you require, i am sure theres an alternative local solution readily available .  Thats half the battle when it comes to building stuff!     The linked part above is called a tube clevis, who would ever know to type clevis in google without thinking it was some kind of prank?   I certainly did not know thats what it was called , all engineers did get a good laugh im sure...

The other part? To get a screw in the tube is called a threaded insert.      

https://www.ebay.com/itm/4-Pack-Threaded-Star-Type-3-4-OD-Round-Tubing-Insert-1-4-20-Threads-S72-244-/302450510951

Connecting the corona to the photoshphere and chromosphere.

http://www.bbso.njit.edu/  November 15th News.  Nov 15, 2019: Formation of solar spicules and subsequent coronal heating unveiled

Link to big bear observatory nov 15th movie capture http://www.bbso.njit.edu/scinews/LayeredMovie.mp4   <

A side note here, linking back to my own thread linking the photosphere to the chromorosphere and also apparently the zone of ionization where calcium atoms become singly ionized..    

Dutch open telescope Calcium line 397nm                                                  Apollo Lasky Hydrogen Line 656nm

     <br>     

Okay so i focused on the "random noise", and what do you know.  Its not random noise after all ;  its like a little tiny river network of lightning streaks.   Sit and stare!

2 hours ago, Thalestris24 said:

Wow! Far out, man! (as us old hippies use to say )

Louise

ps is that the same image that appears on the Lunt site?

https://luntsolarsystems.com/ls50c-etalon-timelapse-please-click-the-gif-file/

 

Very good eyes you have! This sure is that very same image on the lunt site    (My lunt gallery upload does not expose the convection cell data however ) 

  <-Without <BR> With->  

The interesting thing to note here, is the amount of new data that is "hidden" within the entire capture of raw data.  I changed nothing but processing technique.  The image on the left is a standard technique , everyone is familiar with using single layer frame stacking.     The image on the right has a secondary layer; the new layer is processed using a narrower pixel sample which happens to contain a brighter set of pixels. This is why the new data sticks out so well.  

There is even more visible data hidden in there. I could process a third layer, focused on the little twinkle stuff.  But i think it would be a bit confusing like TV static.

16 minutes ago, Davey-T said:

Very nice, I guess you're somewhere that the Sun shines 

Dave

Actually, I am in the United States near chicago. Every once in a blue moon, the nano-goo goes away , the sky heroically turns blue and the sun magically shines.  <a single lonely cloud the size of rhode island races at wind velocity to obsure the miracle>

160mm x 1600mm + Lunt LS50C etalon.

Thanks for looking!

      <br>    

I have this telescope Vixen 80mm f/15 telescope  .      It is indeed optically amazing, and i am lucky to have it with flawless objective. It has been well cared for.

I  changed the focuser to suit modern times,  I can honestly say that the Original focusers  on vintage telescopes are garbage regardless of nostalgia..