Astro Baby is Back Online !!! Yaaay

[Astro_Baby]

All you folks stuck halfway through an EQ6/HEQ5 Strip down or halfway through collimation will be glad I hope to know that my website is now back alive. Its on a temporary host until my own is repaired

www.astro-baby.com it may take a short while before you can see it all again as it takes time for the domain to settle down on the web.

It will have a rough time in a day or so as I start to transfer all my sites to their new home so if theres anything you are likley to be desperate for I sugged you do a copy of the page on your own machine.

[lukebl]

Great to see you back. You'd be sorely missed!

[Photosbykev]

Welcome back on-line. Now where did I leave that bearing?

[Astro_Baby]

Ah well I never said I was quitiing - just selling off my gear. There was a good reason for that. I had an option on something rather special but to get it meant flogging everything else off.

Sadly thanks to all the hassle this week I havent been able to secure anything so it looks like for the time being I am stuck with what I have.

I would, if the right scope came up, flog everything else to get it. I have become obsessed with opning a TAL 125R, I want to put oit on my HEQ5 head with a Berlebach tripod, upgrade its focuser and replace all my EPs with something altogether different.

The object would be to collapse all of my gear down into one single telescope thats lighter and take up less space BUT the scope has to meet a big criteria that it not only has to work well but it has to have, for want of a better word, romance.

Something like a CPC800 would meet most of the requirements but it lacks romance.

A skywatcher ED100 could also meet the requirements but it also lacks in the looks.

The only thing outside of a TAL I have seen which comes close is the Meade 127 Triplet but even that kind of looks too modern.

[Petrol]

Thank you for the Polar alignment guide I understand how it works now

[nobbytate]

Good to have you back online Mel, you could use magnifing glasses and it may look like your 100rs has grown into a 125R

John

[microbe]

Good to have you back.

Just purchased a SW 200P HEQ5 and thought that I was going to have to use the SW instructions for alignment and collimation

Adrian

[Space Beagle]

Cor! A Tal 125R on a Berlebach!...Wowzer!

You'd be popular at Star Parties with that set up! Hope it becomes a reality for you soon!

Nice to know you're hanging around to keep on helping people out the way you always try to do, very much appreciated by all of us on here you are..!!

Doc

[Astro_Baby]

thought that I was going to have to use the SW instructions for alignment and collimation

Well you should - I did thats why I wrote the guides I kep hoping Celestron or Skywatcher will mail me and say something like "Mel, please write the guides for all our telescopes and we'll chuck in an EQ7 and a 200mm APO in payment" but it never seems to happen

[Steve]

Good to see you posting again Mel

[Macavity]

Ah well I never said I was quitiing - just selling off my gear. There was a good reason for that. I had an option on something rather special but to get it meant flogging everything else off.

Well, most of my stuff is (are?) just "place-markers". Will I ever graduate to the REAL thing

between now and DEATH - who knows? But I'll try...

Ever good to have "hardware guys" around, though.

[ollypenrice]

It's a worthy point you make about 'romance.' It is rare to find an instrument that looks like an instrument these days. Maybe a brass tubed TeleVue but is that trying a bit too hard to be 'retro?' Standard TeleVues have something special about them, old fashioned and pure quality. I've had a couple of old ones.

One way to bring more charm to your SCT is to think of strange one-armed Herr Schmidt getting blotto enough to think of an ungrindable corrector plate then getting more blotto enough to realize that if he put a glass blank over a tube and sucked out the air...

Russian scopes do have it, though. No 'styling.' Thoughtful optics. A wiff of the Siberian winter...

Olly