Sky at Night Magazine

I picked up a TEC Cooling kit from the Meade DSI Cameras from a guy in the US on EBay for £30 delivered ..

It took me about an hour to dis-assemble the camera , machine the case and then rebuild with the TEC, Fan and Heat spreader in place...

Here are the first "darks"

Firstly a 2 min exposure at room temp with the CCD at 31.5C as reported by the DSI II

http://www.btinternet.com/~psmithuk/stuff/2minnotec31_5C.jpg ...

Funds are tight so its bits at a time...so its scrounging time... managed to scrounge the timber for the frame...

Decided to get some walls up so at least I can rig a temporary roof when rain threatens...

Only the first fix of the timber structure so far...

12 sided aligned 12 o' North wwill haev double opening doors between 5 and 7 o'clock..

2.4m internal min diameter... to 1.5m high...

Framing will either be ...

If you are building the telescope which we had in our 'How to build your own telescope' features earlier this year, in the magazine, then why not post up some pictures and tips on how you are getting on? We've had a great response and it's great to see some pictures appearing on the forum.

Hello,

Newcastle upon Tyne Astronomical Society recently acquired a Grubb Parsons "Perseus" 225 mmm Cassegrain from a school that was about to be demolished.

Newcastle Astronomical Society Perseus Telescope

The telescope dates from 1984 and appears to be in fairly good condition but is missing the hand controller to start and stop the drives.

Does anyone have any information - or might know where we can obtain some information - so that we can fashion ...

At last my Heavily overloaded CPC has been balanced ... could hear it breathing a sigh of relief...


http://www.btinternet.com/~psmithuk/stuff/scw2.jpg

4.6kg of brass and a non-cpc counter weight rail (non CPC till I got my hands on it ) A couple of mins to make an adaptor plate to pick up the two hole rear fixing on the cpc instead of the single hole meade type...15 mins on the bandsaw to cut through the 3" diameter ...

Hello,
I just got bounced out of preview, so I hope I don't repeat myself. I recently purchased a 6" refractor from D @ G Telescopes located in central Pa. It is seven feet long and weighs approximately 20 pounds. I have already obtained the universal mounting plate and O rings, and I would now like to build an altazimuth mount constructed mostly out of wood. My only concern is that the mount would be ...

Inspired again By Skywatcher I knocked these up...

They are availabe Here in 150,300,600 and 1200 DPI formats...


I Have fitted the +/- 90 degree scales to my WO Field Flattner III and the 000-100 to the LHS knob of the Dual Spped Crayford Focuser on my "66"

Hope someone finds them useful...Use tahn as you will...

Billy...


p.s. Skywatcher your Mailbox is full


http://www.btinternet.com/~psmithuk/stuff/DegreeScale150DPI.jpg

http://www.btinternet.com/~psmithuk/stuff/RotationScale.jpg


http://www.btinternet.com/~psmithuk/stuff/FocusScale150DPI.jpg

http://www.btinternet.com/~psmithuk/stuff/FocusScale.jpg

My question, since im planning on making my own telescope but don’t want to buy and expensive large mirror, or spend ages grinding my own and sending it away to get silvered is...
Can I use many small mirrors all with the same focal length to focus incoming light to one focal point? Will this be as effective (or close to) the light gathering capability’s of a single mirror with the same surface area?

Hi all, in the quest for making my life easier I had a look at parfocalising rings, so simple in design I thought I should be able to make a couple. I used some of the tubing I bought from wickes that I used as the focus draw tube/EP holder for my homemade finderscope, it's got an inner diameter of slightly over 1.25" so its a very nice fit :) I simply cut myself off ...

Hi Gang, just thought I'd let everyone know of my experiences in building stuff this week with a little write up of my spc900nc LX mod and the parallel to serial adapter just to clarify some points through my time doing it :)

I made the parallel to serial adapter for the LX mod, nice and simple and all fits inside a nice little enclosure maplins do, I also finished the EOS to serial adapter ...