Phil's Astronomy Amateur Page

I mentioned a while back that I had a new job. Nothing in the IT Support arena which I've been doing since 1985, no. I'm a Design & Technology Technician at a local school and it's working out really well - not very well paid by comparison, but very fulfilling.

Anyway I was chatting with some of the teachers and it turned out they'd had a telescope 'gifted' them by one of the parents so I said I'd take a look at it as nobody seemed to have a clue how to set it up. It was up in the science lab, in pieces.
Actually, there were two telescopes, both of similar specifications - 115mm reflectors on manual equatorial mounts, one of which was wood, the other aluminium. Unfortunately only one had an eyepiece and that was a 7/8" Huygens item. Plus a very rubbishy plastic Barlow lens which I will treat with the disdain it deserves and ignore for ever more. That should have given the game away straight away.....Tasco. (I see you crossing yourself and looking for the garlic as I type the name...). Fortunately though, both 'scopes had removeable adaptors on the focusers which meant that standard 1.25" eyepieces could be used instead. Bravo to that, at least.


Anyway, preconceptions aside for a while, I 'played' with the jumble of components for a while and identified a couple of areas needing attention;

First, the equatorial head on one of the tripods was missing a bolt and washer to keep it all together. Because of the way it's constructed (badly?) I had to manufacture a shouldered washer, which was no problem as I look after 5 lathes (among other light engineering tools) in my department! As it happened, the finished item was a bit of overkill (as most of my constructions tend to be) but functional nevertheless.

The second issue that applied to both equatorial heads was that the polar alignment knob/bolt didn't seem long enough to be able to elevate the main axis to align with Polaris, so I replaced them both with suitably long (and with radiused ends) M8 items from Halfords. With locknuts on them and preset correctly, it should be less likely that small fingers would be able to fiddle...

Having mounted the tubes in the cradles and aimed them both out the window at some nearby buildings, results were optimistic. Having the same mirror-cell adjustment as my Bushnell, I decided to leave the collimation as set for now - a laser collimator would have been nice to have for setting up but I don't possess one. I didn't want to remove the mirrors to centre-mark them for checking with my Cheshire eyepiece, so fingers crossed the Chinese got it right when they made them...

The teacher with whom I'd been liaising, seemed keen to be able to get the 'scopes up and running for a forthcoming parents evening where (and this is the really interesting bit from my perspective) a nascent Astronomy Club, an off-shoot of the existing Science Club, could spread its newborn wings. I agreed they'd both be ready and available if it meant lending a couple of my own eyepieces, and over the next couple of days I made sure everything was working correctly.

Sadly as is often the case, come the big night (well, we already knew that morning really) it was cloudy and miserable so the inaugural sky-watch didn't happen.

Having lost the momentum of that event, I now need to work closely with a very busy teacher, to see what we can do in the coming weeks. Needless to say I'm keen to help out in any way I can and get this show up and running.
Word seems to have got about in the science department, that I'm the 'telescope expert' which is an onerous title for anyone to live up to, especially when linked to manually-operated Tasco reflectors (!) but I'll meet the challenge with enthusiasm and try to instill that in anyone who is interested in taking up the hobby.

One more point of interest - the school may well be introducing an Astronomy GCSE next year, so I foresee a lot of potential interest in an Astronomy club. Now, how to get rid of the terrible light pollution round here... And we could do with a half-decent refractor... I wonder what's in the school kitty?