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Hello from an oldie

JimD

By JimD
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JimD

JimD

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Thanks again for all the welcomes.

I made the most of the clear skies last night and spent several chilly hours finding my way round the new scope. Got some very nice views of Jupiter and moons, Orion nebula, Peiades and a round smudge that I convinced myself was Andromeda. The nebulae weren't that impressive which I put down to light polution (although I gather from other observers the full moon won't have helped either).

Anyway, I've now broken my nebular duck, and am looking forward to the next clear night! :smiley:

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Special K

Special K

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Well done, Jim, wasn't too bad a sky on Sunday, was it? You must have been very keen to give it a test drive! I've got about Bortle 6 skies at best in my back yard and don't do nebulas well from there. However M57 is surprisingly good.

I don't get much with Andromeda but M81 and M82 are not so bad. I'm really keen to drive out to a dark site to see these things for real.

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JimD

JimD

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Finally got round to taking a couple of pics of my DIY 6" Newtonian.

It's an F9.5 (I was aiming for 10 but missed) and has a fairly Heath Robinson construction, many parts came out of the skips where I worked at the time (a big electical engineering company). The tube is a piece of plastic drainpipe, the mirror cell is an old instrument case capped off with a piece of BP sheet and, if my memory serves me right, the spider is made from pieces of bicycle spoke with a thread cut on either end.

As you can see from the 'down the tube' shot, I could have gotten a bigger mirror in. Maybe one day I'll have a go - it would have to be a 7 1/2" one, as the tube is just under 8". The aluminised coating is getting a bit shoddy as well - reflectivity isn't what it was when new (circa 35 years ago!).

I have a half-built mount for it (which is buried right at the back of the shed at the moment, so no pic of that) which includes a kind of 'saddle' which should enable me to attach a dovetail to it and stick in on the EQ3-2 mount. The only problem is that the scope is heavy - about 6.5 kg which is probably far too heavy for the mount, but I'll give it a go.

post-28514-0-29160700-1359655911_thumb.j

post-28514-0-87546400-1359655911_thumb.j

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JimD

JimD

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Something that big and heavy will eat the EQ3-2 for breakfast. It's probably trembling at the knees even knowing you're considering it. What it really wants is a dobsonian mount, I reckon :)

James

Hi James. Yeah, I doubt if the results will be great, but it's taken me over 30 years to get it this close to a mount, so I'm going to go for it! It'll certainly work better than a dining chair.

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