Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Introducing "Electa"


After some final tweaks, "Electa" is done.  She is named after my great, great, great grandmother, Electa Ann Grubaugh Hissong who lived from 1841 to 1934.


Close-up of name tag I had made.  You can see a piece of brass stock I temporarily attached as well.  This will be replaced with a counterweight system from Scopestuff.com.


Here is the secondary ring with a Protostar, 3-vane spider and secondary.  The secondary is heated using Protostar's built in dew heater.  The light baffle on the other side of the ring is made of Kydex and I attached some Protostar flocking paper.


The focuser is a Kineoptics HC-2.  Dennis Steele from Dobstuff.com made the spider brackets focuser board.  The struts and strut seats are made by Moonlight Focuser.


"Electa" and "Ada" side by side.  This has been a great project.  I had so much fun and I learned a great deal.  First light was last night and I noticed I had the truss tubes cut about and inch short.  I was able to compensate for it by using spacers on the focuser.  The action was stiffer than I would have liked too.  This evening, I applied some Turtle Wax Express Shine Spray wax to the laminate bearing surfaces and the scope moves just like my old Obsession.  I observed M81, M82, M37, and Mars this evening.  I cannot wait to get her under dark skies!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jason,

Congratulations! The scope looks great, glad the mirror has found such a majestic home.

Richard

Undermidnight said...

Thanks Richard! I was hoping you would see it :)

BTW.. the mirror is excellent. Really nice star test. Better than 1/8th wave at least.