24″ Design Considerations
The design for the 24″ I’ve arrived at is based on the design in the image above (from an amateur in France), mounted on a trailer for easy transportation in…
Review: The Celestron Deluxe Off-Axis Guider
By Gord Tulloch, published in the May/June issue of RASC Winnipeg Centre Over the past couple of years, I’ve tried a few techniques for getting auto-guiding working on my Celestron…
Identifying the mystery glass!
I have a 24″ (609.6mm) diameter piece of unknown glass that weighs 72 lbs (32.6 kg) on the nose and is 2″ (50.8 mm) thick exactly. The ROC is 93″…
6″ F3.3 Extra Wide Field Newtonian Reflector
Since I have a couple of 6″ mirror blanks and need to get back into the mirror grinding groove for upcoming large telescope projects, I’ve started grinding a 6″ F/3.3…
NTT16 Assembly
My 16″ F/4.5 Telescope is pretty close to done – just have to mount the motors and belts, and test it all out. I built one set of electronics over…
NTT16 Progress
Sorry no pictures of the actual scope but got a lot done over the Xmas holidays, all the major components are complete, just need to debug. I had an epiphany…
Strain Analysis
Before starting to grind my 24″ project down to a more reasonable focal length I decided to test the blank for strains within the glass that would prevent it from…
Stripping the Coatings
Finally got my FeCl and stripped the two mirrors I’ll be working on this winter – the 12″ is perforated so it was a pain putting a dam in the…
New 24″ Project Glass Arrives!
After years of wondering the best way to create mirror blanks in the 20″ and up class using kilns etc. turns out all you have to do is hang out…
The Rose of Winter
The Rosette Nebula in Monoceros. Imaged on iTelescope T20, a 106mm Takahashi refractor with an SBIG STL-11000 camera by taking 6 300s exposures each in Luminence, Red, Green, Blue filters…