This is a thumbnail pic. Click to
see larger image and use your browser's back function to return.My Toys
(Telescopes and Equipment)
The current inventory consists of a Meade 10 inch SCT mounted on a Losmandy G-11 equatorial mount. The 10 inch scope has dovetail plates top and bottom. The bottom plate attaches to the mount and the top plate carries accessories such as a Televue Pronto for wide field work or my current guidescope, a Vixen 102mm F/10.
This is a thumbnail pic. Click to
see larger image and use your browser's back function to return.
The black pipe is a piece of schedule 40 steel tube that goes through the deck and is sunk into four feet of concrete. The tube is filled with dry sand to further damp vibrations. I told my wife that it was to hold the outdoor umbrella. You should have seen the look I got for that remark!
The small white box next to the pier is a single board 486 industrial control PC that I use to run Mel Bartles scope control software. This PC plugs into my Home Area Network (10-Base-T Ethernet LAN). The PC boots with DOS network support and into the remote PC control program PC Anywhere. This way I can become the keyboard and monitor for this system from any PC on the LAN.
Mel's wonderful program turns my Losmandy into a full go to system. The software has such a host of features that I can only touch the surface here. There is a LX-200 compatible serial interface the I use with David Lane's Earth Centered Universe. This lets me slew from object to object with a mouse click. Mel's program also does pointing error correction to compensate for mechanical flexure and misalignment. There is periodic error correction and much more.
I replaced the Hurst 24 step 150:1 gear motors that came with the Losmandy with some Hurst AS series 48 step 20:1 units. These are a direct bolt on and give me a slew rate of about one degree per second. I would like to slew faster and may experiment with some different motors in the future. Mel's program microsteps these motors at up to 40 micrsoteps per full step. They are rock steady with no detectable vibration at tracking speed.
The round thing is a dial indicator that reads in thousanths of an inch. This combined with the NGF-S focuser tells ne exactly where the focus travel is. Using the diffraction spike method of focusing, I find that I can repeat to within about .003". I feel pretty confident that I can get focus right on if I spend the time. The NGF-S is currently controlled by the stock unit on a long cable. I plan on adding an H bridge to Mel's driver circuit and using the virtual hand pad to control it. I had added focus control function to Mel's program on my own, but maintaining my changes on top of his got to be too much.
The black cylinder on the top scope is my Quickcam autoguider housed in a plastic pipe fitting. This is attached via T thread to an inexpensive flip mirror and with a parfocal eyepiece it is pretty handy to use.
Updated 7/30/00