Some sketches from last night.

-

There was some pretty good seeing conditions last night, so I took my dob out for a few hours until things started to get uncomfortably dewy.

Oh by the way i bought a toy telescope (70mm f/10, optically it's decent but not great--the Galileoscope is sharper despite a smaller aperture) to mess with. was this a mistake? maybe. I hate the mount, but I didn't expect it to be good anyway. Maybe I'll build a "Kid Peek" style mount. But I've never built anything like that and i'm a little intimidated. When I bought the Omni XLT 150 optical tube off craigslist my intention was to build a dob base, but I'm not sure if I ever could have.

I bought it so i could have a refractor to try solar projection with that i didn't care about ruining, and so i could have more experience with small telescopes to be better at helping new astronomers with these telescopes. (I don't want to ruin the Galileoscope, which i really really like)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Beginner's Guide to (Budget) Eyepieces

-
This post is copied from a Reddit post I recently made on r/telescopes.  First, a message of scope, so to speak. I am a budget astronomer, as such I have little experience with expensive specialized eyepiece designs. The most I've paid for an eyepiece is about 50 dollars. However I think most people who want to know about beginner eyepieces would probably be looking for a guide to affordable eyepieces anyway, so I hope this remains useful.
Read more

Why You Should Build an Aperture Mask for your Celestron FirstScope.

-
Image
An aperture mask is a simple cap you place over the telescope to cut down the aperture. The reasons why you might want to do this are not obvious, but in short, they cut down on optical aberrations significantly. This is especially important in a telescope with flawed optics--specifically those with spherical mirrors. This article will be about masking down a FirstScope, but the same principle could apply to any telescope with a spherical mirror, including telescopes that for the price have no right to have one, such as the deplorable PowerSeeker 127EQ and the AstroMaster 114EQ. The Celestron FirstScope is one of my favorite small telescopes, and it's pretty good for scanning around for bright DSOs, glancing at the Moon, etc. Its stock eyepieces are utter garbage, and when combined with the fast spherical mirror (76mm f/4), the Huygens 20mm is almost unusable.
Read more

Comparing Commercial Dobsonians

-
I recently realized that I have close to enough money to get an 8" or 10" full-sized ground Dob, which would be a serious upgrade from my 6" dob. The only other two full-size Dobs I have had any experience with so far have been the SkyWatcher FlexTube 8", which we use outside at the Observatory, and my own Apertura DT6 which I received in March. In both cases I had little choice in which they were--the Eight Inchers were bought well before I started volunteering at the Observatory, and my Six Incher was bought during and open box sale at a significant discount--the only way I'd have been able to afford it at the time. It normally costs $300, but it only cost me about $230, which is quite a steal! Now that I'm looking into an upgrade with a heftier budget, I'm in a position to make a more informed decision.
Read more