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Tag Archives: First Light

First Light by Joe Spencer

12 Friday Aug 2022

Posted by gfbrandenburg in astronomy, Optics, Telescope Making

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ATM, dobsonian, First Light, Joe Spencer, Telescope, Telescope Making

Two days ago, Joe Spencer had first light with the 6″ f/8 Dobsonian he built in the DC-area amateur telescope workshop. He worked hard on this project over more than a year, including grinding, polishing and figuring his mirror, and it seems to work very well.

Here are a few photos:

Two Simultaneous ‘First Lights’ at the NCA-CCCC Telescope Making Workshop

29 Saturday Apr 2017

Posted by gfbrandenburg in astronomy, monochromatic, optical flat, Telescope Making

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First Light

Oscar Olmedo and Jeff Dunn both took the opportunity of a clear night last night to achieve first light with the telescopes that they have been working so hard on. The target was Jupiter. The location is right outside the Chevy Chase Community Center, and time was just about 10:00 pm. The fact that you can see so much in this iphone image shows that light pollution is a real problem there.

IMG_7246

We also managed to do a star test using an artificial star on Oscar’s 6″ f/3. I made the testing rig with considerable help from Alan Tarica and Bill Rohrer. We reflected the light off of a known optical flat so as to double the testing distance. We had everybody in attendance at the telescope=making workshop examine the inside- and outside-of-focus images, and we all agreed that using the images in Richard Suiter’s book, it’s a bit overcorrected, probably somewhere near 1/4 wave of green light, which was what we were using — a green laser pointer attenuated and stopped down to about 100 micron hole. But good enough.

Next step for Oscar is to aluminize his mirror in our vacuum chamber.

Congratulations to both gentlemen!

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