Old Mount's New Life

Even though my health has been miserable for the past week (I'll write more about that in other blog entries), I happened to have enough energy the other day to take the old converted telescope mount out for a test run again.  I started with viewing the moon and our daytime sky.  The slow motion controls are smoooooth.  It appears as though this old mount's new life will work out just fine.  

I brought out a nice selection of eyepieces on this day so I was able to test the manual slow motion controls for low power observing as well as high power observing.  The slow motion controls on this old mount worked very well.

After viewing the moon for a bit using a number of different eyepieces, I turned my attention to the sun.  This meant a change in location since I had been viewing the moon in the shade.  I needed to move into the sun if I was going to view the sun.  This also meant a change in some of the gear I was using.  For starters, I would need the appropriate solar filter to protect my eyesight.  

In order the test the ability to smoothly control the motion on the mount, I decided to use my high power Quark solar filter.  This particular solar filter has an internal 4.2x magnifying Barlow lens so that makes the views high power.  High power viewing means the sun will move far more quickly through my field of view.  This means is a harder to track.  Even under these conditions, the old mount performed well.  I had no problems keeping the sun right where I wanted it. 

What is also nice is that the motion is slow and smooth and this makes a tremendous difference while trying to view your object.  You don't want fast or jerky motion.  Slow, deliberate and smooth is what you want and it is what my old mount is now delivering for me.

For widefield views, I tried a big 2 inch 42mm eyepiece (pictured in the photo below).  This one is an older Plossl design but it is sharp with really nice eye relief.  Eye relief is extremely important to me because I wear eyeglasses.  Eyepieces having long eye relief allow enough space in between the top of the eyepiece and my pupil for my eyeglasses.  I can't put my eye right up against the eyepiece because my eyeglasses get in the way so I need extra long eye relief.  Plus, there is space between my pupil and my eyeglasses.  All this space adds up so I really require extra long eye relief.  This particular eyepiece has enough eye relief for me and it is sharp.  I like it!   It doesn't look so large in the photo below but, believe me, it is a pretty large eyepiece.  Having a nice large top eye lens also helps with comfort especially when you wear eyeglasses...

I added another photo of the new slow motion control knobs that I added to this old mount.  So far, I'm really enjoying these knobs rather than the old tracking motors!  

I also used this large 2 inch 42mm eyepiece while viewing the sun.  It works very well for that too!