[AZ-Observing] Re: Observing from Stone Haven
- From: Mike Zele <mikezele@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <az-observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 5 Aug 2012 14:18:07 -0700
Steve,
Congratulations! I know you have worked long and hard to restore your binocular
chair and I am happy to see you reaping the benefits of a job well done.
My family and I are in North Carolina now nearby my wife's extended family. We
head back to China on Tuesday morning. I am looking forward to you move down to
southern China where the skies will be much clearer than at our current
location there.
Best, Mike
> From: fester00@xxxxxxxxxxx
> To: az-observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [AZ-Observing] Observing from Stone Haven
> Date: Sat, 4 Aug 2012 21:29:23 -0700
>
> Yes, it's early yet. But I just spent the last hour riding around in the
> binocular chair. First fully functional light for the beastie.
>
> And here I thought I was jaded.
>
> In case you don't know, the binocular chair was originally built by Pierre
> Schwaar in the late 1980's. It won an award at RTMC in 1991. It was set up
> and used maybe 3 or 4 times before his death in 2000. It's basically a
> motorized mount, a chair and 2-8" F/4.5 telescopes. I took it home in 2001,
> refurbished it, it broke, I redesigned and rebuilt it over the next 5 or 6
> years, and now it's outside and working great! It has a pretty wide field of
> view with 2 32mm eyepieces in it, but the plan is to run it with 25mm or 26mm
> ep's.
>
> So anyway, after Rosie helped me converge the images just after nautical
> twilight, I started surfing around, testing the range of motion up and down.
> One of the first actual objects I stumbled across was the Jewel Box in
> Scorpius. AKA Ngc 6231, it's a huge open cluster of 4th and 5th mag stars and
> simply an amazing object. The wide field included it and much of the strings
> of stars around it that stretch north and south from it. !! Amazing. i
> continued surfing, found M4, M20, M17, M22, M28, M6 and M7. I drove the scope
> to its maximum altitude, about 45 deg and rotated it through 360 deg azimuth.
> At this time of year, it was a journey along the disk of our Milky Way.
> Absolutely spectacular! I even saw a couple or 3 satellites. (Yes, it's
> pretty easy to follow them with the drive, coupled with the wide fov.)
>
> The whole 360 degree scan took about 3 minutes, I think. It's really hard to
> say. There are a couple issues left to fix. One being the adjustability of
> the head rest. The other the speed of the altitude drive. It takes a good 2
> minutes to go from full alt to base alt. It seems a long time after holding
> your head up for a half hour or so. :-)
>
> So, I'm announcing the actual functionality of the former Pierre Schwaar
> Binocular Chair, now the Steve Dodder Binocular Chair. I hope to upload and
> post some images soon, and update the project web pages. I'll post a link
> when it's ready. If you'd like to look through it, when the weather clears
> up, just email me and we'll set something up. Aside from that, especially if
> I can get the headrest adjustable, I'll have the chair at the All Arizona
> Star Party in October.
>
> Steve Dodder
> Chairman, SAC Novice Group
> Coordinator, Grand Canyon Star Party, North Rim
> Director, Stone Haven Observatory
>
> fester00@xxxxxxxxxxx
>
> http://www.stonehavenobservatory.com
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