Best Observing in a long time

Ok so sometimes Insomnia pays off. I took my binoculars out and had a very nice time. I spent most of my time
touring around scorpius and sagatarius. Nice view of Jupiter and a few moons. Spent some time viewing M7, as well as a globular (not sure which one) and a gassious nebula. (M20?) I also saw an amazing fireball. One of the best ones I've seen. It went from Lyra or Aquila all the way to Ursa Major. with a pretty well defined head and a very long tail. I also took the binoculars off the tripod and looked around Lyra and the summer triangle. To bad that that the ring nebula is not within what you can do with my binoculars.

This was all out the back and side of the house with my celestron 15x70 skymasters. If anyone wants an intro astronomy tool these are great. Not the fanciest thing in the world, and not really great for planets. But for under $100 its about the best you can do, assuming you can find a heavy duty tripod.

Mirror in hand

I have my 114mm F8 Mirror. I should be able to start building the scope around it in the next few days. I'm going to find a few feet of sonotube after work. Then to get started working on putting the thing together next week.

Low cost small telescope project

One of my current goals for this blog is my 500 Shekel telescope project. I would like to build a number of small (4.5"/114mm) reflecting telescopes for as little as possible. My current goal is that it should be about 500 Israeli Shekels including 1 eyepeice (A 25mm Plossl) and the main optics etc. 500NIS is as I write this about $125 USD, and this should include the cost of importing the optics from the USA. I don't know if this will actually be a price goal that can be hit, but its worth trying.

So why the blog? It is my hope that if other people in other far off corners of the world would like to build a telescope (or a bunch of scopes). that this blog might prove some useful ideas.

If anyone out there ever does use my plans or ideas, please let me know. Or even post a picture of the scopes you may build from them.

Cost of Plywood

A co worker has just informed me that a 4'x 8' sheet of plywood costs about 100NIS. If cut carefully this should be enough for 3 telescopes. Now to find out about PVC for the focuser.

Telescope Components

Ok in addition to the optics, to build a scope we will need the following sections

• Scope Tube (Sonotube)
• Spider and Secondary Holder (wood and metal for the spider)
• Mirror Cell (Plywood, some bolts and something to allow them to be adjusted)
• ground board (Plywood, with furniture feet)
  
• Mount (More Plywood)
• azimuth bearing (wood or PVC)
• Focuser (PVC)

Tools needed:

• Circular saw
• Router
  
• Drill
• Jigsaw
• Some jigs for various things
  

Other things needed

• epoxy
• bolts
• Nuts
  
• 1" Dowel For secondary holder
• metal strapping
• Cork shims
  
• teflon

Telescope factory, copied from my LJ

OK I have had this idea for a while but the strong shekel and the fact that I have found some decent sources for optics in the USA makes this seem like a good time to put the idea out to those in Israel, would anyone be interested in finding some time this summer to build telescopes.

In terms of cost this is what we are looking at

• Primary Mirror $33 (4.5" F8, good for a small starter scope), secondary included
  
• Plossl Eyepiece $25 each, I would suggest at least a 25mm, but it may be worth getting a few
  

Here is the thing, if you just order the primary mirror shipping will be about $23 to Israel, however according to their shopping cart if we order 3 mirror sets and 3 eyepieces then shipping only goes up to about $40. The upshot is that if we want to build 3 scopes then the cost would be about $70 each for the optics. We would have to fabricate a bunch of stuff locally (Mirror cells, Spider, Focuser, scope tube & dobsonain mount) but none of that is impossible. Best guess would be about 300NIS for optics, and at most 200 NIS more for everything else. Maybe less.

I'm still working out ideas for finderscopes

If anyone is interested please let me know. Power tools would be a plus! Routers and circular saws seem to be the things we would need the most.

I would be happy to also show people how to find star charts on the web.

Feel free to pass this on to anyone you know who might be interested.


In terms of what can be seen with a 4.5" Scope

• The Moon, in great Detail
• Jupiter, including the 4 major moons and some surface detail
• Saturn, Rings and Major moons
• Most of the 109 Messier Objects, some may require a dark sky
• A large number of double stars, variable stars etc
• Sunspots and the like ONLY VIEW THE SUN WITH A PROPER SOLAR FILTER, Such as Baadar solar film!

Some details on Jupiter and Saturn will be better with a higher magnification eyepiece such as a 8mm Plosssl, about another $25.

Back to Medium format

I was photographing with the Rolleiflex today, and it felt good to have it back out. Its a joy to use, that big ground glass on top make composition so much nicer than on my 35mm SLR with its tiny view finder. It also felt like the film advance was working again. I will take in the roll of print film tomorrow to be developed. I love the waist level finder

At some time in the near future I will take it in to the shop for a CLA (clean, lube, adjust) it will probably cost a bit but the camera is so worth it. A joy to use, with wonderful optics and a big 120 format 6x6 film it just takes great pictures.


EDIT: The pictures of Belvior came back, they were quite good. I'm going to be using the rollei more often now that I know that it is working.