New World Datsuns...

That sucks. Hopefully they bounce back.

I hope the watermelon plants make it and the Watermelons of size continue to grow and ripen, next year I will get the Watermelons in earlier, the Corn and Pumpkins oh well, everything else is fine.

This is what the pumpkins look like now, the ones that had the leaves get blown off only turned Orange, they didn't grow anymore.


This is what I got from that late corn planting, I think I ate 2 earlier, I believe I ate one carrot already and I ate half of this one and have 3 maybe 4 more.


I already had one Watermelon also, it was not very big, I am letting the other ones alone for now.

I need to plant the corn and Watermelons earlier next year.

Well things have slowed down work wise, I was working on the Datsun U320 but I got this huge telescope and have been messing around with it lately, one of the cats got in it and walked around on the primary/main mirror(it's worth more than I bought the telescope for), it appears that it didn't scratch it with its claws but I had to clean it, keep in mind that you cannot even brush the mirror off with anything as it will scratch it, even a paper towel will scratch it, I pulled the mirror out, cleaned the sink, put a cookie cooler rack in the sink and set the 14.5 inch round mirror on it, the mirror is 2 inches thick and weighs a lot, I start soaking it with luke warm water right out of the faucet, I slowed the water down to a small stream and I then poured some dish washing soap on it and started lightly brushing it with my fingers, I rinsed it and did it again, while it was soaking in the sink I placed a clean towel next to the sink, I then poured all the water out of the con caved mirror and rinsed it off with distilled water, then placed in on the towel on its edge leaning against the paper towel/rack and I used compressed air to remove all the left over moisture, I laid it flat on the towel and let it dry some more, I looked at the mirror holder trying to determine why I had to shim one corner to align the primary mirror with the secondary mirror to no avail, I then put it all back together using the shim, the mirror holder is 3 legged and the mirror itself is held on the rack with 4 fingers with a rubber type covering, the rack has 4 nylon screws to hold the mirror in the center, so there is no stress on the mirror from the shim.










You can see how dirty the mirror was in this photo.


Now I am on the hunt for a couple good eyepieces, everything I want is on back order, I have looked at the moon, Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars so far with my crappy small eyepieces using an adapter, I have had better views of the moon and all the mentioned planets than I have had with the other telescopes, but Mars is going to be tough, it is so bright that the glare is awful, I figured out last night if I used the moon filter I could see it better, so on top of needing better eyepieces I need filters also, the good deals on eyepieces are all on back order, but I need them to know what filters I need, and really good eyepieces are $400.00(cheap) to just under a $1000.00 for top of the line, I am trying to find good ones on sale for $250.00 to $300.00, I only need two good ones I think, I need a 2" Barlow lens(doubles magnification) so it is like having 4 good eyepieces, and then I need some filters to fit the eyepieces, Mars is so bright I put a towel over half the aperture(end of the telescope) and I still need a filter to stop the glare, I am hoping to see ice caps on the poles of Mars some day when I learn how to use this monster telescope, photos do not do it justice, the telescope is slightly taller than me and way fatter.

I am kinda focused on my telescope right now, it is very frustrating sometimes, you can look at the Moon and it looks perfectly clear, but when you look at the Moon thru the telescope it kinda dances sometimes, and why does it dance, because of heat coming off the telescope mirror itself, because of heat coming off the roof on my house, because of heat coming off the neighbors house/roof, because of the heat coming off the road in front of my house, or it could be a bad seeing night, there is so much more to this than looking thru an eyepiece.
I have learned a lot over the past week, I bought an expensive eyepiece and it arrived yesterday, it was like looking thru a completely different telescope, I still have not seen Jupiter, Saturn, or Mars in any type of detail but I have gotten a better look at them, I want to see clearly the bands of clouds on Jupiter and see Saturn better and maybe some of its moons, I am still trying to see Mars clearly, it has looked like a mini sun so far, all I have seen so far is what looks like a ball of fire, but everyone tells me Mars is not an easy planet to see any detail right now, the seeing has to be good.

Astronomical seeing - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org › wiki › Astronomical_seeing
The seeing conditions on a given night at a given location describe how much Earth's atmosphere perturbs the images of stars as seen through a telescope. ... While large telescopes have theoretically milli-arcsecond resolution, the real image is limited to the average seeing disc during the observation.

It is patiently waiting out in my garden, it has not moved an inch.

I was talking to my wife earlier this week about how bright Mars is and she said that she read somewhere that right now Mars is the brightest it has been in something like 10 years.

Taterhead wrote: ↑Wed Oct 28, 2020 11:01 am I was talking to my wife earlier this week about how bright Mars is and she said that she read somewhere that right now Mars is the brightest it has been in something like 10 years.

4 days ago it was terrible, when I looked at it though the telescope it was looking like a small sun, then 3 and 2 days ago it was dimmer to the naked eye but looked like a fireball in the telescope, last night I was trying to figure out if I should just look thru my expensive eyepiece lens alone, or if I should use the not so great Barlow lens with it, a Barlow lens like mine is 2X magnification, so what I am saying is if the planet in the lens was a 1/4" round, if I use the Barlow lens it is a 1/2" round/bigger/looks closer, I was looking at Mars thinking I seen this dark area in the middle right side of the planet without the Barlow, but it was so small I could hardly see anything, so I started switching back and fourth between the Barlow/eyepiece to the eyepiece alone, I finally decided to stick with the Barlow/eyepiece, I could not figure out what I was looking at, was I seeing things, was it a telescope malfunction because it was not collimated/aligned properly, what was I looking at, this went on for an hour, and then I seen it and I was stunned, I had just went thru all that and I sat there looking at it and adjusting the scope to keep it in the center of the field, something had just happened that I didn't think was ever going to happen, on the right side of the planet(it's on its side) I seen the Mars polar ice cap(it is very small), I was looking at details on/of the planet Mars, honestly I didn't think it was ever going to happen as most say Mars is a tough planet to see details, I was glued to that eyepiece for another hour(1AM), I got out of my chair, packed everything up and put it away for the night, it took a couple hours to get to sleep.

I have not seen details on either Jupiter or Saturn and they are supposed to be easy with a telescope like mine, easy on a good seeing night, yesterday was an average rated seeing until 11pm where it was upgraded to a good seeing, and transparency was rated average the whole night, tonight is rated good seeing from 7pm to 10pm, and average after that, and 10pm is about when Mars gets high enough in the sky to look at, but I can look at Saturn and Jupiter when the seeing is rated good.
This is the site I look at for conditions right now.
https://www.cleardarksky.com/c/PortORkey.html?1

Last night was a good night, the guys on the telescope forum said my telescope was out of alignment so I just spent over 2 hours reading this and trying to collimate my telescope so I can see better.
https://garyseronik.com/a-beginners-gui ... llimation/

This is what Mars looked like and why the telescope guys kept saying my telescope was not collimated properly, see the streaks of light coming off the planet Mars in this photo, they are not supposed to be there, I just stuck the camera up against the lens and took the photo.

I have been playing with the telescope a lot lately, I have not had a good day since seeing the polar ice cap on Mars, I think the biggest issue is I am trying to stargaze in my back yard, since it has gotten cold people are heating their houses, the roofs on these houses including mine shed heat like the desert sand does when is is hot out causing everything to be blurry, that is called poor seeing, if I want good seeing I have to wait for a day calling very good or excellent seeing and then pack up the telescope and go to a place away from the city where it is actually dark outside, since I have a large telescope I need to take it apart, pack everything so it is safe, go to where I am going, put it back together and collimate it while it is still light outside, and then wait for it to get dark so I can stargaze, then either take it apart and drive home or take it apart, spend the night sleeping and then drive home in the morning.
I might drive around and do some exploring for places, a great place would likely be up at Timberline Lodge parking lot, or the Johnson creek parking lot north of Mt St Helen's, but I am sure I can find something closer, all I need to do is drive around and find someplace open without a lot of houses around away from the big city.
I will eventually find something where I am not making anyone nervous, too bad the parks all have gates, I found a good spot but it says the park closes at dusk.

Any good spots toward the coast?

The best spots that way I expect would be in the mountain passes driving to the coast.
I believe where you live would be good also, it is likely very dark at night around your house.
If I could put it in my 521 kingcab diesel truck in the tilted down position this would be a no brainier, I would just drive to a dark spot and pull over and look around from the back of my truck, but the mirror is not really held in very tight, it has these 4 light duty clips with the ends wrapped in electrical tape that are held on with these finger tight round headed bolts like are on a desk top computer to hold the side covering on, they are not meant to be screwed on tight, I have been told the clips are not supposed to even touch the mirror, the mirror does not move because there are 4 nylon screws that keep the mirror centered, all 4 of these screws bottom out in the mirror holder so it is not really holding the mirror tight, it is just holding it centered, if I were to tilt the telescope down 90 degrees and make a holder for the top these clips and nylon screws are all that holds the mirror in place, also the secondary mirror in the top section of the telescope has some weight to it also, with it hanging there at 90 degrees a big bump could likely bend the shaft holding it there, I cannot drive around with it in the upright position for a couple reasons, first it is over 6 feet tall and the wind alone could blow it over or maybe bend something, and I cannot use straps to hold it down/upright as the straps would likely also bend it, you can see it is an aluminum truss telescope made of mostly wood, and nylon screws also hold the truss tubes in.
It has to be pulled apart to take it anywhere, now I am getting faster at collimating it, I am learning, if the box containing the mirror was not so heavy I likely could just put the box/mirror in the back of my truck, throw the aluminum tubes in the back with it, put the top in the passenger seat, put a box with everything else I need in front of the passenger seat and call it good, it likely would only take a half hour to set it up but it has to be light out to collimate the telescope, I have to be able to see the small collimation cap hole I am looking thru in the donut in the middle of the mirror, basically I am looking at the pupil of my own eye in the hole of the collimation cap that is being reflected back from the dead center of the mirror which is in the dead center of the secondary mirror which is aimed at the collimation cap hole in the center of the focus mechanism that holds the eyepiece.
Everything has to be so precise to have the telescope work properly, all that I described just now is just to have a straight line between the center of the mirror and the center of the eyepiece using two mirrors, but the primary mirror still has to be aimed also, every time you change the aim the primary mirror, you have to get that line described above back to center, I can aim the mirror with a laser, that is easy and can be done at night, but using that collimation cap has to be done when it is light outside so I can see the black dot is centered in the donut in the center of the mirror, by the way that black dot is the pupil of my eye, and a flashlight does not do anything except blind me, the tube has to be free of all obstacles so a bunch of small 12V lights might be able to be placed in there to help with the collimation cap part, but I have heard no one talk about doing such a thing on the Cloudy Nights forum.

This telescope thing is way more complicated than I thought it would be, and eyepieces are expensive, if I lived out in the country it would be a lot easier to deal with, when it was warm out I had none of these issues with heat coming off houses/roofs, so in the late spring/summer and early fall seeing should be better, too bad that comet didn't come by in April.

This telescope thing can be very aggravating and rewarding when things happen right, who would have thought you have to have the telescope at the outside temperature as if the mirror is warmer than the air around it the heat coming off the mirror distorts what you are trying to look at like the heat in the desert comes off the ground/freeway and makes the mountain in the background all fuzzy when you look off into the distance, your roof, your neighbors roof, the roads, they all release heat at night and make the air turbulent, when one like me is trying to see details on Mars surface I have to sit in front of the eyepiece for hours on end waiting for that moment of clarity when you can see the details of the surface of Mars.
When Jupiter and Saturn are in the sky right now they are so low on the horizon that I can only see fuzzy planet as between me and them planets is Portland and everyone is heating their houses, I don't blame them for wanting to be warm as I am heating my house also.
Last night I was looking at Mars as usual till likely 11pm, then a cloud bank came thru and Mars and the Moon disappeared behind it, so I had read that the Orion Nebula was over in this certain area of the sky next to 3 stars in a row at a certain angle, I found it right away, it is something normal people cannot see with their eyes, maybe a few have the eyesight to barely see it, it is 4 or 5 stars at its center with a giant cloud around it, the cloud is a blue/gray color and it looks nothing like the photos of it in the books or on an astronomy forum, the photos you see in them places are 30+ photos taken over several hours, they then stack the photos on top of each other and then use filters/tricks to make them look the way they think they should look, Hubble photos are likely closest to the real thing your ever going to see, anyway I looked at it for a while until I got cold and packed things up for the evening, what baffles me is how the Orion Nebula can be so clear in the telescope eyepiece being it takes 1344 light years to get here while Mars only 12 minutes away can be so hard to see details of the planet, it takes only 12 minutes for its image to get here, yet something 1344 light years away is crystal clear, I am looking at something that happened in the year 666 AD on earth, to me it seems like Mars should be easy to see, but that is not the way it is.
Another thing that is strange is that when I look at Mars thru my big Starsplitter telescope it is a certain size, but if I use the same eyepiece in my smaller telescope Mars is half the size, so that makes me want a 20" or 30" telescope so I can really see Mars on a good seeing night, it would likely be the size of the Moon in my eyepiece, but I suspect it don't really work that way.
I have seen enough detail on the Mars surface including the polar ice cap to have the guy that has been helping me the most in learning about my telescope to say that he believes that I now know how to collimate my telescope as I would not be able to see what I am seeing if it was not collimated properly, so they all quit bugging me about that, they all thought I could not see because my telescope was not "tuned"/collimated properly, the biggest issue around here is I live in a bortle 8 area, there is only one bortle rating worse and that would be where people live in a down town city where it never gets dark at night, it's daylight there 24/7.
Hope everyone is doing all right, I work on the U320 every once in a while, but playing with telescopes right now, I made an adjustable chair a coulpe days ago to make sitting in front of the eyepiece more comfy, it adjusts to what ever height I need to keep my eye in front of the eyepiece.

You sir are very crafty indeed

Well I tried my chair last night and it had an issue, when I sat on it, it would slowly slide down, the farther back in it I sat the faster it dropped, it didn't drop all at once and compress my spine which is nice, but I would soon be stretching my neck trying to keep my eye in the eyepiece, so today I made a modification, I added rungs for lack of a better word, now it slides till it hits a rung and then stops, I also added a handle and a threaded rod that goes thru both 2X4s to keep them together when stored that also uses a wing nut.





I cut the legs to make it a little narrower when hauling it around, I will need to seal the ends where I cut them shorter, now I need a pad, oh and I sat on it at its highest position and it was stable, my feet don't touch the ground way up there.

I have got into this telescope thing pretty deep, I will likely be selling the 6 inch scopes I have in the near future as they work just fine, but what I am looking at is not large enough in the eyepiece for me to see much in them 6" scopes, instead of being a small dot it is a large dot, but it is still a dot, an example would be looking at 3 different photos of a marble, the small marble is so small from across the room that all you tell is it is a marble using a 14mm eyepiece.


If you use a 7mm eyepiece the marble is larger and you can definitely see that it is green now and maybe a little more detail.


With a 4mm eyepiece you can see it is green and it has a line going thru it.


Well telescopes work the same way but in a different way, it is called focal length, and there are equations that include mirror size and and how much the mirror is dished, in the end my big telescope shows a much larger Mars in the 10mm eyepiece than using the same eyepiece in my small telescope, using a 10" mirror with a F/6.5 focal length Mars would appear the same size as my big scope but likely slightly darker.

So in the end I need a smaller 10" scope with a F/6.5 focal length to see the same thing if I want a smaller scope that is way easier to transport to dark sky sites, or just take the large scope apart, put it in the truck, go to the dark sky site, put it back together, collimate it, then at the end of the night take it apart again, load it up, drive home and unload it and either put it back together or leave it apart to load it again the next time I go to a dark sky site.

I expect if I go to a dark sky site like the Timberline lodge parking lot on Mt Hood and look at Mars and have a good seeing night, I will never set it up again on my property because I can't see anything on my property compared to what I could see in that Timberline parking lot, this is where living out in the middle of nowhere would be a good thing, and I mean way out in the middle of nowhere where it would take at least an hour of driving to get to a large grocery store.

I picked this 10" Apertura up recently but it is not much better than my 6" scope, it's a nice scope and I could sell it within a couple days for more than I bought it for, but it is a F/4.9 focal length scope and is closer to my 6" F/8 scope than it is to my big scope, but before I make any rash decisions I need to take it to a dark site and look thru it, I might be able to see better than I think.

It took the guy 2 years to be happy with this photo, this is the Orion Nebula(M42), what I can see thru my telescope doesn't really look like this, it is more blue and light grey, the red has not shown up in my eyepiece so far but I have had nothing but mostly poor seeing except a few times.

Well I am starting my first scratch made Dobsonian telescope, I received my 16" mirror 3 days ago and I am making a mirror cell(holder) from scratch, first I am making what I want to make out of wood, sheet metal, and scrap metal I have around here, once I have my design figured out I will make the real one.

I thought about a 9 point mirror cell but the 16" mirror I bought is a sandwich mirror, I figured out 2 different 12 point designs but in the end I am going with an 18 point cell.

The 12 point designs.





This is how far I got today with the design, here is the top, next the bottom, you can see 2 triangles are on teeter totter systems, and each triangle will tilt any direction also when I am finished mocking everything up.





You can see here I made plastic contact points, there are nine, I will cut each one in half tomorrow after I make something to cut them in half without cutting my fingers off, they will about a quarter inch thick.



Tomorrow I will have to add collimation points to each inside point of the triangle, then I will have to make a support cage for it all, not sure yet if I will make that out of wood yet or not, can't really use Home Depot/Lowes plywood for that, it really needs to be high quality plywood like Birch or the like and that stuff is expensive, but I will likely make something out of scrap plywood to make sure I get it right first.

Here is the mirror.

I have no idea what I'm looking at but it's cool.

It is a mirror cell(holder), it is what the mirror is in inside the telescope, I made some progress today.

I put together all the white plastic contact pads that the mirror rests on and I made what is called a wiffle tree assembly that supports the mirror when is it at an angle, you can see the white rollers at each end and the one at the top that is vertical, all this keeps the mirror from sagging and distorting the view, the mirror is not supposed to be pinched in any way as it will distort the view, I still need to make some clips that keep the mirror in the cell in case there is an accident.









This is the bottom and the round piece of plywood is the size of my mirror, 16.25" X 1 9/16" thick which is 407mm X 40mm.





I am just mocking this stuff up and figuring everything out, once I am fairly sure I have everything right I will make one out of either aluminum or thin walled weldable metal, I want it to be light but I am not trying to make the lightest telescope, I just want it to be lighter than my Starsplitter.

I have made a lot of progress over the last few days, mostly improvements.

















I am making this up as i go, not sure if anything is for sure yet, I bought materials today to start on the real mirror cell.

Well I got sorta fancy with my mirror support, at first I went with 2 arms, but the bottom arm was not touching the lower part of the mirror.





Then I made a self centering support with one arm and it now touches both upper and lower sections of the mirror.





I think I can put a larger piece of plastic on the arm studs that hang out over the mirror, and I can adjust everything so they just clear touching the mirror by less than a 1/16", you don't want them touching the mirror because that can deform the mirror and make the view distorted.









Still making it up as I go. lol: