Well, I just took the plunge. I bought a 10" telescope

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

Got it assembled. Its on my deck right now, cooling down. Sunset is in about 1/2 an hour or so, and will be getting dark right fast after that. My deck faces the east, so I have a prime location for Jupiter and Saturn. The weather is promising. There are some high whispy clouds, but I am optomstic they’ll go away as the sun sets <crosses fingers>

Question:

Any scope people know the proper way to align the spot scope? It has 2 “screws” on the bracket, and 1 kind of spring-loaded jobby. Is it a trial and error job more than anything?

22

Oh yeah, slewed up to Zenith, the thing almost comes up to my nose, and I am about 5’10".

Its a big sucka! Yippie!

23

Yeah, but there’s gotta be a better way to do it. Slew around the scope to a real bright target, say, the moon, and then adjust the finder scope.

Then, again with a smaller target. Jupiter would work, and readjust.

Anyone with a better technique? 'Cause I’d sure like to know.

24

I had a 10" Newtonian for a long time (more than 20 years; I wound up selling it for a song to a friend when I moved). They are great for big flashy objects like nebulae, galaxies, and star clusters, but only so-so on small planets. Jupiter and Saturn look awesome in them, but you may not be thrilled with Mars, even this time when it’s close. Mars never really looks all that great.

But try looking at the Moon. Now is the perfect time, when it’s half full and longish shadows can be seen.

Anyway, if you live near a good observatory, try there when Mars gets big. But expect to wait in line… :slight_smile:

25

I assembled mine by leaving it in the box and buying a Telrad. Trust me on that one. You need a Telrad.

26

Thats exactly what I did. Adjusted nice and easy, and works like a damn. She is pretty much spot-on now. Thanks!

27

Congrats on the new scope. I’ll not ask what you paid for it, but Mrs. Phlosphr and I built one of these last year and love it. We actually built the 10" Dobsonian scope. No the girl in the picture is not our daughter, but we did use the plans on the site for our design. We made some slight modifications to it, because we do quite a bit of lunar photography. We have a few great shots of a slightly blurred saturn, and several good ones of jupiter.

I’m pretty psyched for mars this year as well Bernse!

28

Wow! de nada :slight_smile:

That’s Texican for “Yer welcum, Dude!”