Moon through the old blue tube with barely any coating

Let's see the last time I looked through this was in 1977., the year we built it.

This image is not anywhere near the quality it should be, had the telescope been stored properly from the old days. Perhaps much of the coating would have been gone anyway due to the cold winter temperatures in the observatory.

The view through this (and it's not even optically aligned as it should be) were better than in this photo.

Basically any telescope you would purchase, even a cheap store bought would give a better eyepiece view than the photo below.


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Photo of 1977 blue tube notice mirror coating is gone

I wrote a long post about this but closed my blogpress software before it posted and lost the post.

Rather than recreate it, I'll write more later.

Notice much of the coating is gone but the mirror and scope could be restored. I think it might be interesting to do a partial restore and fix up the optics a bit, simply recoating it and perhaps adding a different finder.

We will see what happens. We don't look thru this now. But I set it up to quickly look at the moon last week. I also took a photo of the moon with this last week. The photo of course wasn't very good, I'll post one of them later.




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We had a great time at the observatory last night

Gary, Greg, Tim, Sharron and I had a great time at the observatory. Sharron was only there for a short time. The rest of us were there for a few hours. We didn't take to many photos and added the Canon into the mix near the end of the night. We took mostly photos on the Meade to confirm the object we were looking at.

Here's a wide field view of the ring nebula. This is a wide view from the little 80mm Meade refractor, so you'll need to click on the link and open up the big picture and zoom in to see it. I have bigger photos of this from the C14 and other nights. Most of my photos are just a shot with the Canon mounted on the telescope and I rarely use stacking or other higher level touch ups on most of the photos I take at the observatory. This just came from the camera.

We ended up doing more looking, winch is a good thing, especially when the skies are cooperating. So many conversations about astronomy were going on in the dome, it's impossible to recount them all. What a great time.

The weather was really nice out, with occasional fireworks fired off by the locals, but that didn't bother us.

One FAAC member told me he has driven by the observatory at least a dozen times and never saw me here. Maybe he just missed me, sometimes I get out later and I've been really busy and slammed during the week so I did skip some nice nights and didn't open up or put a post here. Also I have been opening up at times and just notifying the FAAC members on the board. And sometimes I decide to open up at the last minute and don't always post it here. If you drive by and see my car near the track near the observatory, or my f150 truck and this would be inside the fence near the observatory, then chances are I'm there for some event. Usually the small gate is open when the public is welcome which is almost eve time I'm out. The only exception would be for some special maintenance event, which is rare.

Conditions were nice last night, but it seems that the naught before had better seeing conditions. at least at the observatory. Conditions were still very nice, it seemed a bit better the night before.

I left around 3 am, hanging around a bit after the last visitor left.



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We will be open tonight

There may be limited viewing opportunities for visitors at times while we adjust the mount. We usually can show visitors something through the telescope. I'll have another telescope handy, you may have to wait a while as we do some adjustments tonight.

We try to put a priority on viewing and showing the night sky when the viewing is good. Just be prepared if you visit tonight to possibly wait tonight if we are adjusting the mounts model.

I'll try to bring a big telescope align as backup but I'm not promising the big backup dope will be there.

No solar observing today however from my perspective because I have other things to do until nightfall.

(and unfortunately there is a lot of activity on the sun lately and kits a joy to view thru special telescopes like the solar telescope we have in the observatory.)

Warning, never observe the sun without a proper telescope filter setup. Ask me or a competent astronomer if your in doubt before attempting to look at the sun. Best bet is to be safe and not observe the sun.

Here is a picture of the moon from this morning. It's not a great photo but it gives a rough idea what can be seen at times. The view is actually much better looking through the eyepiece yourself. Also the moon rises late. You will not see it early in the evening and we ay not be out there late enough to see the moon tonight.




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I stayed up all night and was home and falling asleep at 6am

I finally tore myself away from the eyepiece. Jupiter was so wonderful to view under the clear transparent conditions. I basically couldn't walk away from the eyepiece.

Nobody else showed up but I may be out tonight at the observatory or take my telescope out somewhere else.

I also may be out at the observatory this afternoon to so some solar observing at 4pm. Check back here for more details or post a reply if your interested.

Click on full sized image below to get an idea what Jupiter looked like this morning through the eyepiece. It was so bright it looked like a full moon and was almost blinding in the eyepiece.

Also it had an covered 4 degree field of view inside the eyepiece, which means it appeared to be 8 times bigger than a full moon would look to the naked eye (observing the moon without a telescope) looking at the moon.




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Sorry for the last minute post

If there are any faac members in the core group up tonight and you wish to spin by the observatory please call me before 2am.

If there are any other blog readers in the area I will leave the small gate open.

I'll only be here for sure until 2 am.

I know this is short notice. I'm here now and just woke up.

I'm very tired bur trying to get a couple hours in.

I'm so tired I napped And woke up just 15 minutes ago missing a phone call.




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Looked at the moon today

This morning at my house


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