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stinger_ranch
home built 18" f/12.6 classical cassegrain at my ranch
I have the shroud removed. It is important for stray light control
the frame is constructed of TIG welded aluminum squarewall tubing with crossweave carbon fiber truss tubes similar to what are used for bicycle and oar construction
Comment
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Comment by Trevor Woodrow on May 19, 2011 at 11:49pm
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Fantastic Richard! Nice view too.
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Comment by Richard Crisp on May 19, 2011 at 7:28pm
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glad you liked it. It was my first attempt at building a telescope. I had to teach myself how to TIG weld too. It wasn't that hard. One friend said that TIG welding aluminum is a "grownup's glue gun". I thought that was pretty funny and amazingly on-target :-)
I just posted a bunch of other photos of it taken after I first built it. I don't use that guiding scheme now: I use an OAG (old Lumicon Giant Easy Guider) and the trusty ST7E parallel port. I then put on a variety of cameras but lately use an FLI ML4022.
the interline sensor has an electronic shutter and that lets me open the mechanical shutter and take very short exposures for my flats: like 30-100 milliseconds. They come out perfect and it makes it feasible to take sky flats using broadband filters. Sky flats always are preferred but they can take some effort to do properly.
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Comment by Steve Coates on May 19, 2011 at 6:53pm
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Anyone who images from a homemade scope has my attention. Nice looking outfit.
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