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The diffraction pattern of the 8″ LX90AT with the broken corrector plate
The image of the Hadar (Beta Centauri) through the broken 8″ LX90AT. Look, the star image is no longer pinpoint.
Saturn delivered by the 8″ LX90AT with the broken corrector plate. It looks like the Saturn is being engulfed by a black hole.
Now, the main character~
Did you ever try to break your scope before? I doubt you dare. I maybe the first LX90AT user with the cracked corrector plate.
Here the story begins.
If anyone remembered my previous post about disassembling the LX90AT, you should know why I removed the corrector plate. Yes, I dropped a toothpick into the OTA from the visual back. All of the nightmare started from here. I bought a Purosol Optical (PO below) and their microfiber cloth as I planned to clean the corrector plate. In the end, I cleaned the primary mirror as well because the PO claimed that the solution was enzyme based and would not hurt the coating. That’s true, just that the microfiber cloth left quite a lot of fiber behind.
Continue reading ‘Cracked Corrector Plate: LX90AT’
Galileoscope™ is now on sale at USD15 @ Galileoscope official website.
What’s a Galileoscope? In celebration of International Year of Astronomy 2009, a team of leading astronomers, optical engineers and science educators developed a high-quality but low-cost telescope kit. At just USD$15, you can own the Galileoscope which is even better than the one used by Galileo Galilei himself since 1609.
Continue reading ‘Galileo Scope Ready To Ship’
If you’re a computer enthusiast, you must be familiar with the benchmark score obtained from 3dMarks, PC Mark, Everest, PCMark, Prime 95 and so on. Is there anything similar to represent the performance of telescope? Well, there’s is and someone did it in the form of scores too.
Credits to Mr.Yoshida Hiroshi, he has done a review on 75 telescopes. He reviewed them visually and scored them. The photographic performance of the telescope is not taken into account. I would say this is just a reference for you but not solely the factor to consider a telescope.
Before buying a telescope, I suggest you read through the reviews posted at forums like cloudynights.com and most importantly, join a stargazing session with someone who already owned a telescope. You will know better what to expect.
Here you read the rankings, cz-telesco.bbs.coocan.jp
The content is in Japanese, you can use Google translator to translate into English or any other language you prefer.
Image shift and mirror flop are the common phenomena seen on mirror type telescope, especially SCT. When either of them happens, you can see the image through the eyepiece shifting. The reason for these phenomena is the not-so-perfect movement (slightly to left or right) of the mirror. What’s the difference between them?
While focusing, “Image Shift”.
While slewing, “Mirror Flop”.
Both are actually the same thing. When focusing, you are doing the shift of the mirror back and forth, thus you made the imperfect movement and the movement caused the image shift; when slewing, gravity is doing it and it causes the mirror flop.
Before anything starts, I want to explain AA. AA is my own abbreviation, it’s Amateur Astronomer in full.
What’s the common requirement of an AA’s scope? Unless you are a serious AA with deep pocket, you won’t have an observatory that allows you to mount a gigantic telescope inside. Some AA travels to the dark site with his scope or just move his scope from his house to the backyard. It can’t be too heavy. So, portability comes into one of the major considerations. We want to get the largest aperture within the portability.
8″ SCT has it all. For example, my fork mounted LX90 has an aperture of 203.2mm, 2000mm focal length and weights about 24kg. I can carry it around easily. (Not for a marathorn though)
Left: 8″ LX90 of Erwin Kats from Netherlands.
Continue reading ’8″ SCT The Best?’
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