My Telescope On Static Display

This at a school event earlier this year.

On the road again...

So this morning we are making our way across Texas from San Antonio to Alpine, TX. We have our Honda element Locked and Loaded and as this posts we are rocketing down I-10 with our 16" Meade Lightbridge in tow. Hopefully the weather will be nice and we'll get some observing in. I don't know if the hotel we are staying at has internet... but I'll try to find a hot spot so we can update.

The plan:
We'll there isn't really one..other than setting up our telescope for private observing Wednesday night at McDonald Observatory and then we are helping out with 2 star party outreach events also and McDonald Observatory.

Davis Mountains here we come.

Next week my wife and I are going out to the Davis Mountain area of Southwest Texas (the same place the Texas Star Party is held) for our 4th Wedding Anniversary. We are are planning on viewing the Marfa Lights and taking in the sights of Marfa, Alpine and Ft. Davis. Thank to Bryan T. the chairman of the San Antonio Astronomical Association got in contact with the head of the McDonald Observatory Visitor center and we have been granted permission to do some private observing with our 16" Lightbridge. We are also volunteering to do 2 outreach events at the visitor center.

If our hotel has internet I'll try to update next week.

Garner State Park Star Party - June 27

This weekend, my wife and I went to Garner State Park for a star party. We met with fellow members of the San Antonio Astronomical Association at Cracker Barrel at 151 and 410 around 9 AM in San Antonio. Then, we caravaned out HWY90 to Garner State Park. We arrived just before noon and set up camp. Once we got hot, we decided it would be nice to hop in the bed of a truck and go take a dip in the frio.

We enjoyed swimming, watching college kids get ticketed for drinking in the river, and watching two of the SAAA members on the rope swing. Once we were good and pruny we got out of the river, changed and drove into Leakey, Texas for some great Italian food.

After dinner, we drove back to the park and we set up our 16" Meade Lightbridge dobsonian telescope. I was able to use my gigapan to snap some wide angle views: (More Blog after Pictures)

Zoom in on these:




After dark, the public showed up for viewing. We kept the scope on the Ring Nebula for that. Then. around 11:30PM I was able to do some serious starhopping. With the help of my lovely wife, we starhopped to many objects. We saw M51, the Sunflower Galaxy, Owl Nebula, and more. I eventually turned in around 2:30am. Viewing was great. I got to bag about 13 objects off my Messier list I'm working on as part of the astronomy League's observing list.

Heat Shink on a Lightbridge by Meade a Marriage Made For the Stars

If you saw my previous website, Astronomer Matthew, then you know that I have a Meade 16 inch lightbridge dobsonian Telescope. I got that telescope in November of 2008. I think that it is a nice value. I know that it isn't a premium dobsonian like an obsession nor did I pay the price of an obsession. The lightbridge is a fairly good scope as it comes from Meade (we'll actually GSO, they make them for Meade, Zuhmell and Astro-Tech) However, there are a few modifications that make the scope even better.

For starters. I painted the tube rings with ultra flat black spray paint. This helps cut down on stray light coming in the tube. This is a simple modification, but I'd like to mention that I feel powercoating would be a better solution and wouldn't chip as the spray paint did. Meade ships the rings white. They are easily removed for painting.

Next, to make life a lot easier I recommend replacing knobs on the secondary housing with "bob's knobs" these are finger grip knobs that make it easy to adjust the secondary without any tools. The 16" already comes with finger knobs for the primary, and newer 10" and 12" scopes should be coming with them as well.

I also feel that a light shroud is a must, especially in light polluted skys. Keeping stary light out of the telescope helps improve contrast. I've seen a fellow lightbridge owner set up under a street light without a shourd it get some views, but those could have been dramaticlly better with the use of a shroud over the truss tube section. I currently use the Astrozap version of the shourd.

For transportation, I was able to modify my base to accept wheel burrow wheels to help move it. This helps when I can't park where I need to setup my scope.

One of the things I don't like was the fact that Meade sends these out with silver truss tubes... that was easily fixed by some heat shrink. I went to Altex in San Antonio, a computer supply store and bought black shrink wrap that was big enough to fit over the tube and just used a heat gun to apply and it worked like a charm. It is a shame that meade didn't think of doing this. It also prevents the poles from clanging around in the back of the car. I'm looking forward to using this mod in the winter when sometimes it is uncomforatable to move the scope because the metal is cold.

I also purchased a 8x50 finderscope from OPT on sale and I was able to add that to the lightbridge, increasing my starhopping ability. To counter weigh the finder scope I got some welding magnets from harbor freight tools.