Well things have been a bit quiet on the observing front recently. There have been one or two clear nights, but these seem to have coincided with quite a bit of Moon. This coupled with fairly awful transparency, meant for the most part I couldn’t be arsed to open up. The other contributory factor has been that my Van Slyke Turret has been in the engineering shop for the last six weeks having a filter wheel attached to it. I bought this last year at the Warwick Astro Fair and it’s taken till now, to get round to getting the two mated together.
To compliment the 2″ OIII filter I brought at the same time, I acquired an Astronomik 2″ UHC and an el-cheapo Orion 13% ND filter at Augusts Norman Lockyear Astronomy Fair. I now have the three filters fitted in the wheel, with the last slot of the four kept empty, for an unfiltered view.
While everything was in bits, I took the opportunity to clean all the eyepieces – which really needed it and re-greased the turret. I think this must have been the first time this had been done, as what looked like graphite grease was completely dry and probably explains why the rotation was very stiff. I also packed out the indent spring by a few millimetres and now the turret snaps nicely to its indent at each eyepiece postion.
One thing I didn’t take into account with the design, was the clearance between the Televue eyepieces and the filter wheel. When the eyecup tops are pushed all the way down, they hit the filter wheel body , so I can’t rotate the turret all the way round. I can get by for now with about 270 degrees of rotation, but will need to get a 3mm spacer made to move everything back a tad. It’s my own silly fault not checking this before the work started.
Now all I need now is a clear night to try it out!
Search
Categories
Archive
- July 2020 (2)
- April 2020 (2)
- March 2020 (3)
- February 2020 (2)
- November 2019 (1)
- May 2019 (2)
- April 2019 (3)
- February 2019 (2)
- January 2019 (4)
- November 2018 (2)
- October 2018 (1)
- September 2018 (1)
- May 2018 (1)
- April 2018 (3)
- March 2018 (2)
- February 2018 (5)
- January 2018 (4)
- October 2017 (3)
- September 2017 (7)
- August 2017 (14)
- July 2017 (19)
- June 2017 (19)
- May 2017 (28)
- April 2017 (26)
- March 2017 (35)
- February 2017 (43)
- January 2017 (8)
- December 2016 (3)
- January 2016 (3)
- December 2015 (1)
- November 2015 (2)
- October 2015 (4)
- September 2015 (8)
- August 2015 (2)
- May 2015 (1)
- April 2015 (3)
- February 2015 (1)
- January 2015 (1)
- December 2014 (3)
- November 2014 (2)
- September 2014 (3)
- August 2014 (1)
- July 2014 (4)
- June 2014 (4)
- May 2014 (4)
- April 2014 (2)
- March 2014 (1)
- January 2014 (1)
- December 2013 (2)
- November 2013 (2)
- September 2013 (2)
- August 2013 (3)
- July 2013 (3)
- June 2013 (1)
- May 2013 (4)
- April 2013 (6)
- March 2013 (2)
- February 2013 (6)
- January 2013 (2)
- December 2012 (1)
- November 2012 (1)
- September 2012 (5)
- August 2012 (4)
- July 2012 (2)
- June 2012 (5)
- May 2012 (12)
- April 2012 (1)
- March 2012 (2)
- June 2011 (1)
- May 2011 (2)
- March 2011 (3)
- February 2011 (3)