by Jay Reynolds Freeman
Some of you are familiar with my current telescope-building project, a 10-inch f/5 truss-tube Dobson that will take down compactly enough to meet checked baggage limits on the airlines. I had some bits and pieces of it at the last SJAA general meeting.
The telescope is not yet finished, but tonight was first light, in the restricted sense that I had the mechanical parts all together, with the optics in place, focusing on a few random stars. With no light baffle, no paint (so that stray light was bouncing off bare wood surfaces), and Palo Alto suburban lighting, I wasn't going to do any serious work, and with no finder installed yet, I was unlikely to locate anything to look at, anyway. The purpose of setting up was to verify that there were no surprises lurking in errors of measurement or in errors of calculation.
Well, I am still waiting for the other shoe to drop, but everything fit, the focal point was where I expected it to be, and the balance was a little bit tail heavy -- I planned conservatively, to err on that side, and will use finder weight and position to tweak it, after I have the shroud in place, too.
I am of course very pleased, and I wanted to go public in a forum where the weather gods might be listening, and say loudly that I DO NOT PLAN ANY REAL OBSERVATIONS FOR ANOTHER MONTH OR SO, so don't go blaming me when it rains at the Messier marathon this weekend...
This isn't the largest telescope I have built, but it is certainly the most complicated. There has been a lot of rather fussy wood working, with relatively close tolerances. Yet the unit indeed shows signs of turning out suitable for its intended purpose. I expect I will do some lengthy postings on it after it is further along.
-- Jay Freeman
PS: I'm not going to tell you what color I am going to paint it, you will have to wait and see...