Saturn - Say Cheese

We took a picture of Saturn tonight. It is amazing to see.

Wheelbarrow Dobson

Wheelbarrow Dobson

We are nearing completion of our Telescope based on the Dobson designs. As you can see, we made some modifications from the original plans. Some of these modifications have drastically added to the already high weight of the base and tube. In order to save my back, and help move the scope easier, we have added wheelbarrow handles, and two wheels supported by a steel axle. The handles can be quickly removed by taking out the four pins securing them to the base.

Instead of painting our scope, we decided to wrap it in plastic shelf liner that is printed with a wood grain. This was a pain in Uranus to do. It looks good even though we have a few wrinkles.  For the base, we decided to use a dark tarnished copper spray paint. The tube box is painted with a metallic silver spray paint. Both are coated with a clear spray on lacquer.

Cannon view

To decorate our scope, we are attempting a steam punk theme. We have installed steel cables and turnbuckles to secure the tube in place of the traditional shims. These cables have so far performed well and the turnbuckles can be used to adjust the tube up or down.

A look down the tube

Erica found a great solution to protect the edge of the cardboard tube. We bought the metal strips used on the edge of wooden or tile floors, and bent them around the end of the tubes.  We then drilled holes at regular intervals and used rivets and washers to secure it to the tube. It definitely adds to the steam punk look.

We are still planning on adding some decorative features.

Our Telescope is Going to ROCK!!

We spent a few hours today assembling the rocker box for our telescope.

The Tube box sits in two 60 degree V cuts on top of the rocker box.  This will allow us to move the scope from 0 to 90 degrees. 

    

The plans we are using call for us to cut two 4" circles out of plywood.  I attempted this with a jigsaw and was very unsuccessful. It was more cloud shape than circle. I decided to stray from the plans and use 4" PVC flanges in place of the plywood. 

Next we are going to build the base. This should not take very long as it is just two pieces and 4 feet.

Are thoes ice cycles hanging off the moon?

The temperature was somewhere around 29 degrees.  The sky was clear, and tonight was a full moon.  After reading countless blogs what are the best settings for taking photos of the moon and other planets,  I really wanted to try it out again.  I put on two jackets, a pair of gloves and set up the scope and camera. 

I was able to find the software that lets you control the camera from a computer.  This let me snap the photos and do other adjustments without shaking and bumping the scope around. 

I also learned how to fine tune the exposure times so that objects like the moon are not to bright.  When using the camera to look at the moon through a 2X barlo lens I can see quite a bit of detail. This however leave me with small chopped up pictures of the moon.  I took several of these pictures making sure to cover the entire moon and used paint.net to stitch them together.

Bye bye clouds, hello fuzzy pictures.

Jupiter

Well the clouds finally went away for a night.  I was able to break out the Cannon DSLR and try my hand at astrophotography. I now have a new found appreciation for some of the images that that other armature astronomers have taken.


Things that I learned from my first session of photographing the stars and planets.


1. My hands shake allot. I had to set the camera on a 2 second delay so I could push the button and take my hands off the camera and scope.


2. Any movement no matter how small is huge when photographing something that is over 588.5 million km from Earth.


3. The amount of light we see through the scope is amplified by the camera.  I had to play with the exposure time and shutter speed to the shot of Jupiter above.

Jupiter and its 4 largest moons
with to much exposure.

Moon

The Tailgate

We worked on the tailgate today. We used one of the 10" x 10" pieces we cut from the sheet of plywood. Using a compass we measured and drew a 12" circle from the center of the piece of wood. This marked the lines to cut off the corners of the square so it will fit into our tube.

Next we drew a 8" circle on the wood and divided it into 6 equal parts. The helped us find the position to drill the three holes for the bolts that will be used to adjust the mirror to focus it. we painted the top of the piece and are waiting for it to dry.

We successfully cut out all the parts that will be used in the assembly of the Dobsonian 10" telescope. We ran into a slight issue after following Erica's advice to use a wide sharpie as the width of the saw blade. The sharpie's width is approx. 1/4 " and the width of a saw blade is closer 1/8". This made for some interesting recutting to remove a black sharpie line from the outside of each piece. Ah well, live and learn. As my wife said, "nothing a band saw could not have fixed."

We are going to start on the tail gate next. This is the piece that holds the mirror in the back of the scope. You can see it in the above image as the 10' x 10' square that has three holes in triangle form. This one should be interesting as we exercise some of our rusty geometry skills.