Thought I would be out for 10mins, turned into 1.5 Hours!

Well last night, it was clear skies in Bray but it was bitterly cold with the windchill and annoying gusts. I had no intention of doing any observing but I did want to take advantage of some actual stars visible in the sky to measure all my EP's focus travel requirements for an imminent purchase of a Moonlight CR2 focuser with Rigel Motorfocus. I also wanted to measure my base to find out what size ebony Star laminate ring I needed to order to resolve my Azimuth Stiction issues.

Well I did all that and was about to pack up and get back inside out of the cold but........

I noticed how High Arcturus was! And realised that M3 would be even higher. Well over the neighbours roof. Its amazing to notice the procession of the seasonal night skies. I remember what seems only a short while ago when Arcturus wouldn't have risen even by the end of an ultra late 3am observing session!!

Anyway, I couldn't resist! I did a quick collimation and fine tuned alignment of my telrad and finderscope. My Object Locator is out of action atm so I had to do this the old fashioned way. I scanned the area with my 15x70 bins and located M3 and then knew where to point my finderscope and then moved to My EP.

Wow!! Spent a while trying different mags and then thought I would head back inside..........

......but then I realised that Hercules must now be up too!!

Of I went to M13....Double WOW!!

So what I thought would be wheeling the scope out for about 10 minutes of tests and measurements, turned into about an hour and a half!!

Thats a fine session there, M13 always hogs the eyepiece on a good night!

Fair play Keith!
It's always great when you surprise yourself!

I also wanted to measure my base to find out what size ebony Star laminate ring I needed to order to resolve my Azimuth Stiction issues.

Before you go looking for EbonyStar laminate try this: Remove your Azimuth base, clean it with a little soap and water and dry with a clean cloth. Then apply a generous amount of car (Turtle) wax and let it dry fully. Now buff it off with a dry cloth and reassemble. You will probably find that this cures the problem.

If not, then here's another trick. Remove your Azimuth base again and put a Teflon washer onto the central bolt. You will need to shim this up so that it is exactly the same thickness (or *just* slightly more) than the three Teflon pads. This puts the bulk of the load of the telescope on the central pad with just a little being distributed to the three other pads. This trick works well on bid Dobs. You can get thin Teflon or Nylon washers in any hardware supplier (Heatons / Chadwicks / Woodies etc.)

Phil.

PS - Any Formica with a "Quarry" finish will work just as well as EbonyStar. The Quarry finish is nice and rough, just like it's more expensive counterpart and works a dream. You can probably pick up an off-cut from a joiner's or kitchen makers workshop, or from Irish Laminates on Nth. Brunswick St. in Dublin - check their skip before asking in the warehouse!

My first real WOW moment was seeing M13 through a 10" dob, I even said "WOW", out loud.

Can't wait for it to be higher in the sky at a reasonable hour later in the year when its a little warmer and I can really spend some time on it. I wasn't even dark adapted last night and while none of the stars were like sparkling diamonds like in most of the open clusters and were faint, I could see that it was resolved mostly to the core. Just a pity the seeing wasn't great either. The stars might have resolved into finer points. Still I was well impressed even if I was not seeing it at its best.

Philip, I've done the soapy water, drying and Turtle wax already. Only lasts one session. Might be to do with the cold.

I can't do the MilkJug AZimuth central bolt mod. This is a popular mod from the Yahoo Orion Group where the lads cut discs of plastic out of the sides of plastic milk containers to use as you describe. Unfortunately with the Orion Intelliscope versions, the sensor encoder board of the DSC needs to be mounted here on the underside of the top board. ie the central bolt actually goes up through a hole in the encoder board. So unfortunatley no taking up the load from the outer teflon pads at the central bolt I am afraid.

Too late to be scouring skips I am afraid. I already ordered the ebonystar last night!! :oops: