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22" Update

Ambermile

By Ambermile
in DIY Astronomer

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Ambermile

Ambermile

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Set up last night at Seething early (while it was still light - makes a hell of a difference!) because there was a public open night (more later) and they start arriving early and get in the way. I'd taken the 8x50 finderscope that mounts on the mirror box as well as the Rigel on the secondary cage to make sure I could find stuff but this turned out to be a bit of a joke - aligned the scope on Arcturus (nice bright star, right?) then align the two finders while someone keeps Arcturus in the FOV. Simple right? Bo*****ks was it simple! Visually, at dusk, the only thing showing was Arcturus so we just "assumed" that the bright star in the FOV was it. Was it 'kin eck as like! That 22" begins to be a real PITA because we ended up wasting 3/4 hour trying to figure out why we couldn't find anything when in fact we had found too much!

By now of course Mr Public had been slowly arrriving for the 8 'o' clock start. Well, you may or may not know that the BA are having a bit of a bash here in Norwich (Science Week). The NAS are heavily involved and so get plenty of chances to advertise the fact that they are around. Last night we were overrun plain and simple. Usually we get 50 or so at these events but compare that with maybe 150 wandering about and you can see it got a bit hairy

The scope was cooled nicely but what do you do? Only things worth looking at were clusters and doubles so I pointed at M13 (beautiful, resolved *right* to the core even with this moon) and let another member (Adrian Orr) ascend the ladder for a peek. Suitably impressed, he climbed down to a surprise for both of us. Three steps up the ladder for M13 seemed not to be a problem for anyone and there was a queue! A big queue! Slowly, with either I or Adrian nipping up every other viewer to check alignment/focus, we got through them all. Adrian lost count around 65 people and a welcome cup of tea then they all seemed to start coming back wanting more

At this point though the Moon was well up and although targets still looked reasonable in the EP the light from the Moon actually on the EP made things awkward. Right then, doubles. Something low (not so dangerous on the ladder) and sort of interesting. OK, Mizar. Old Roman Army sight test, nice visual double that splits in the EP again. It was wicked! Colours! Big and little stars!

Anyway, we got through the lot a bit quicker this time, only 3/4 hour or so telling the same info (as you do) to everyone new. By now getting seriously Moonlit so dropped to back Arcturus (yup, both finders aligned ) and let people actually *touch* the focuser to see what diffraction spikes are and how they help focusing and how you can see the spectrum of the target in them (yes, we could - awesome!).

Pretty soon the third or fourth repeat of the lecture finished and people began to trickle away around 11pm or so and a huge sigh of relief went up. By then it was still a bit milky, the Moon was high and the secondary had all but dewed up completely (yes I know, but it didn't fit). Smunch had come down to test-drive a mount and so on for Kelling and had got pretty much roped into showing the Moon all night so had dropped an OIII filter in the ED80. Now though, I borrowed this and screwed it into the 9mm Hyperion and carefully spun those 22" around to the Moon. I make that about 300x, (FL is 2.74m) the mirror was perfectly cooled, the air was still, bit of high haze, dewed up primary. Magnificent! Truly a great sight! Craters in Plato! (I only counted three :laugh: ) Had to drop the 17mm Hyperion with the OIII filter in and that too was stunning, beautifully crisp views. The few visitors that were left had struck lucky now though because they got to spend maybe 10 minutes each actually *using* the scope rather than looking through it..."driving around the Moon" one said. "I need bigger binoculars" from another

I spent another 1/2 hour or so on the Moon myself just looking - not done that for years - then packed it up and went into the clubhouse for tea. A great night and one that may well be repeated again tonight as we do the same thing all over again.

Arthur

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Ambermile

Ambermile

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More news - the beast now has a Lumicon NGC Sky Vector push-to computer fitted. Hopefully running via a PDA in the next week or so!

Arthur

PS - Oh, and a couple of 5" fans blowing onto the underside of the mirror.

PPS - I may put some speed stripes and fluffy dice on later :wink:

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Ambermile

Ambermile

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So now its computerised 8)

Well, sort of. The NGC will sit at the EP end hopefully, with the PDA running Pocket Stars at the bottom. The idea being to select a target from the PDA and get the scope roughly in the right place, then get up the ladder and use the NGC to align on target. Should work :wink:

Arthur

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