Didn't open up tonight

Was open last night very late, to do some configuration tests for future Planetary photography using the Stellacam.

The setup didn't go as smooth as I hoped.

Tonight there was a slight chance I'd open up but the weather wasn't going to offer great skies. I fell asleep taking a nap at 9pm with a very sore back ache. My short nap turned into a long nap and I wok up at 2am.

Watched some Netflix. A video about histories mysteries, with Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Then wrote up a bunch of stuff on my laptop, that doesn't make a lot of sense. Saw the sky was still clear, but I'm not gong out. . .

There are other events happening away from HJRO and it's supposed to rain this Thursday evening, so I don't think I'll be opening up HJRO Thursday night.

I might open up Friday, but many of the Faac members may be out at the school outreach event out near novi. That's a bit far for me to drive to, with HJRO nearby. . . So I might open up Friday. . . I'm kind of playing it by ear, as I've been pretty busy with other things like getting my tax refund finished.

I have a huge todo list right now and need to get a bunch of normal things done. I've been reading up a bit and studying mirror building techniques this week. . . Mostly to screen stuff out there because a new member had some mirror building questions.

There is a lot of stuff out there on mirror building, most of it is in the form of quick tips, on YouTube videos for example. They cover different techniques and ideas, but it's kind of experimental and something that one learns bh doing the process. The old school way of building telescopes was more defined. There seems to be a lot more talk about newer techniques and different newer ideas, which of course may work better, but are really much less standardized and less defined. . . Compared to the old ways of doing things. We used to for example use two mirror blanks two piece of glass one being the mirror tool and the other the mirror. With two identical piece of glass being the same size, the technique was pretty much standardized. With newer techniques to save on cost or do advanced mirrors, there is a lot of talk about sub diameter mirror tools, smaller sized tools that are smaller than the main mirror one grinds for a telescope. There is a lot of talk about making a tool out of plaster. This to save on the cost of having a mirror blank or tool that costs as much as your mirror does. To sve money mirror builders create a tool out of plaster or some use metal tools from barbell weights, etc. These different techniques save money but are much different and create different experimental techniques.

Most of the guys in the FAAC club that built mirrors built them a long time ago, and they don't build them now, because they don't want to do the physical work and strain their backs with a lot of long grinding and polishing techniques. It's much faster to buy a finished mirror or repurpose a mirror from a telescope and build a new telescope design. So a lot of modern do it yourself builders, use a mirror they buy and just assemble and built the tube or frame of the telescope.

Some members of the FAAC club build or machine telescope parts as well. These guys of course have a lot of shop and machine experience, so they can build some really wonderful devices and parts for astronomy.

A few members build parts for telescopes and sell them to the public as well.

One club members builds parts as a side business called Telescope Support Systems. Another member of Faac, Eric Webster, builds custom dobsonian telescopes known as Webster Telescopes, build here in Detroit. Webster telescopes builds telescopes with mirrors created by premium telescope mirror builders who build customized mirrors for high end amateur astronomers. Mirror builders like Mike Lockwood, or Carl Zambuto. These mirror builders build large mirrors which are very close to being perfect mirrors and are very expensive. .

There are perhaps less than a half dozen premium mirror builders in the northern hemisphere. There may be some optical shops that gild premium mirrors as well, which don't have the name of the builder prominently known. Some custom mirror building companies, of course may build mirrors with very high quality, custom telescopes that are very high priced and end up being built for observatories or NASA projects. These systems are generally priced well out of the range of most amateur astronomers.

I'm starting to get into rambling on about mirror building now, so I'll stop writing. . . Time for me to take another nap.


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