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Airline-portable 8" Dobsonian telescope

by arpruss on August 3, 2011 Table of Contents Airline-portable 8" Dobsonian telescope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Intro: Airline-portable 8" Dobsonian telescope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Step 1: Measuring mirror focal length . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Step 2: Primary mirror cell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Step 3: Mirror box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Step 4: Altitude bearings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Step 5: Rocker "box" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Step 6: Strut . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Step 7: Secondary mount and stalk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Step 8: Focuser board and focuser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Step 9: Light shield . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2 3 3 5 5 6 6 7 8 9

Step 10: Balance issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Step 11: Packing for air travel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Step 12: What have I seen with this scope? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Related Instructables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

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Intro: Airline-portable 8" Dobsonian telescope

I wanted a telescope I could take on a plane but that would have a usable aperture. The resulting scope weighs about 16.5 lbs, with a mirror box that fits in a backpack and that has about half of the weight, and with all the other pieces fitting in luggage, along with clothes and whatever else I am packing. The scope looks funny. It has a square box on semicircular rockers on the bottom, then a single wooden strut leading to a focuser board out of which sticks out a stalk for the secondary mriror, and a rounded coathanger with a light-shield. The original design used two struts, but one is enough at this size. After disassemly, no piece is more than 16.5" long. The second photo shows all the parts reading for packing up. I originally planned for the telescope to assemble on location with no tools, but ended up relaxing that to allow for one Philips screwdriver. Using Philips screws in a few places reduced weight over the big wingnuts I would otherwise have used. The telescope doesn't look like much, but I've had good views of the Whirlpool Galaxy, the Dumbell Nebula, the North American Nebula, the Ring Nebula and various other deep-space objects. It works on planets, too, though it's best for low-magnification deep-space viewing. I originally planned to use a 6" F/5 mirror, but I got a very cheap 8" F/4 mirror with a crack. Turns out the stresses induced by the crack only seriously distorted the mirror in one area, and so I blacked that out. That explains the dark semi-circle near one side of the mirror. There are gory details of how I tested the mirror here. At the time, my woodworking skills were extremely limited (they are still pretty limited). The power tools I used were: - cheap Harbor-Freight jigsaw - power drill, with a set of hole-saws and a 1.25" spade bit - friend's table saw (I could have done the cuts with the jigsaw and a good blade instead, like a Bosch Progressor U234X) - friend's mini-router for one elongated hole, which I could also have done with drill and rattail file (and I could have just had a round hole with better measurement). I also used a home-made laser collimator for aligning mirrors. The optics were: - 8" F/4 cracked mirror, bought for $39 on CloudyNights - 1.83" secondary mirror, bought for $9 on CloudyNights (one end was a bit turned, so I blacked it out) - Mars's Eye red dot finder (you can also use a Daisy red dot finder from Walmart, especially with some modifications) Other parts and supplies: - scrap wood and particle board - JB Weld - Titebond II - silicone glue (the older, smelly kind; the newer non-smelly is supposed to be not as good) - 1.25" PVC conduit - 1/4-20 carriage bolts, fender washers and a few nuts - miscellaneous machine screws and nuts - 1/16" bondable PTFE (amazon's Industrial and Scientific store) - 1/4" threaded rod and 3/16" square rod (many ways of doing this) - one thumbscrew - some woodscrews - a bunch of 1/4-20 three-lobe female thru-hole knobs (amazon's Industrial and Scientific store) - one vinyl record (about a dollar on ebay) - acrylic flat black paint - one coat hanger - some foam board - some wire ties - duct tape - one binder hole reinforcer sticker - two long extension springs - three strong compression springs (I used mower engine valve springs) I suggest that you read all the steps before doing anything. I am not giving many dimensions as they'll depend on your mirror. I will assume you know how a Newtonian telescope works.

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Step 1: Measuring mirror focal length

A crucial step that determines the sizes of many parts is to measure the mirror's focal length (don't trust labeling). There is more than one way to do it. My favorite is to take the mirror outside, put it on a soft chair, and point its optical axis at the moon (a bright star, e.g., Sirius or Vega, should do). The optical axis runs through the center of the mirror, perpendicular to the mirror. Then hold a small piece of wax paper on the optical axis, at around that distance from the mirror surface that your mirror seller told you was the focal length. Adjusting the mirror and the wax paper a bit, you should see the moon on the wax paper, reflected from the mirror. (You already have a telescope. If you had a camera sensor in place of the wax paper, you could take a picture at that step, albeit shakily.) Move the wax paper along the optical axis until the moon is as sharp as it can be. The distance from the wax paper to the mirror is the focal length. You will want to design your telescope so that the distance along the light path--remember that in a Newtonian telescope the light path bends at right angles at the secondary mirror--from the primary mirror to the end of the focuser tube when the tube is fully racked into the scope is about 1/4" less than the focal length. You can achieve this by adjusting the length of the strut or tube, the placement of the primary mirror, the distance from the secondary to the focuser, etc. Basically, the crucial thing is that your eyepiece's focal plane should go where the wax paper was (taking into account bending of the light path by the secondary). The design in this instructable is good for short focal length. My mirror's focal length is 800mm. For significantly longer focal length, you'd want more struts than one.

Step 2: Primary mirror cell

The mirror box and primary cell are made of approximately 3/4" oak. One could also use 1/2" Baltic birch plywood for the box and maybe 1" Baltic birch for the cell. The idea behind this kind of cell is very simple. The mirror is glued with 1/4" thick pads of silicone glue (thick for instance to isolate the mirror's thermal expansion from the cell's thermal expansion, and thus prevent stress to the mirror due to mismatch) to one piece of wood. This piece of wood has three bolts sticking out of it, there are springs put on the bolts between the cell and the bottom board of the mirror box, and holes for the bolts are drilled in the bottom board. Finally, wingnuts are put on the bottom board, and adjusting the wingnuts allows the mirror angle to be adjusted for collimation. Here are some more details. First, I put the mirror dimensions into Graphical Plop to calculate the optimal placement of the silicone glue pads. Normally for a mirror of this size, one would use three pads. However, because I was using a damaged mirror, I wanted more stress relief for the glass, and so I used six. Basically, the pads go in one circle, and Plop calculates how far from center they go. I acquired three valve springs from a dead mower motor at a mower repair place (I just asked the guy if he could extract them, and give him $5). These are pretty big springs--about 1" diameter. One could use smaller compression springs from Amazon's Industrial and Scientific store, too, but I like these ones. They keep the mirror very solidly in place. I can't remember how I cut the rectangular base-plate for the mirror box. If using a table saw, it makes sense to combine the cutting of the base-plate with cutting the sides of the box (see next step). I used a jigsaw to cut the cell in the (non-regular) hexagon shape shown in the first photo. I also cut--I think with a table saw--the bottom board for the mirror box. Both the cell and the mirror have four holes each for ventilation (one wants the mirror to cool quickly): a large one in the middle (hole saw), surrounded by three 1.25" holes around the outside (spade bit or hole saw). These holes line up, so cool air can flow through the bottom board's holes and the cell's holes, as well as around the cell (which is smaller than the mirror). Between the three 1.25" ventilation holes in the cell, after countersinking, I drilled 1/4" holes for the carriage bolts that would come out of the cell, all the way through the cell and the mirror box bottom plate. The countersinking was done with a 1.25" spade bit in three places: on the top side of the bottom plate and on the bottom side of the hexagon mirror cell in order to keep the springs in place as in the photo, and on the top side of the mirror cell to sink the heads of the carriage bolts in. (Because spade

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bits are guided by their center, it is a very good idea to countersink before drilling the 1/4" holes.) Countersinking on both sides weakens the cell, but with the really hard oak I was using, I wasn't worried. I then used JB Weld to glue three carriage bolts into the mirror cell, with the heads being covered with JB Weld (gray filled circles in first photo). The carriage bolts need to be sized so that after going through the cell, then having the springs on them and then going through the bottom plate, there is enough sticking out that you can put wingnuts on the bottom end. It's hard to keep the carriage bolts pointing straight--I had to bend them a little after the glue set so they'd fit into the bottom plate well. Before gluing the mirror to the cell, it might be a good idea to finish the wood to your liking. The scrap I used was already pre-finished on one side. Normally these days I use a very simple and cheap wood finish: a 1:1 mix of Titebond II and water, in two or three coats (it dries enough to sand in 30-60 minutes or so), sanded lightly after each coat. You might want to leave unfinished the area where the silicone glue will go, so that it sticks to the wood rather than possibly pulling off with the finish. To glue the mirror to the cell, the idea is that you put 1/2" thick gops of silicone glue on the cell in the correct places that when squished down by the mirror will spread into 1" wide and 1/4" thick discs. The gobs went at the correct distance from the center (calculated by Plop--the exact numbers will be different for you unless your mirror is sufficiently like mine), and went in between the six previously drilled holes on the cell (the three 1.25" ventilation holes and the three 1/4" countersunk carriage bolt holes). However, for additional safety, I drilled 1/4" holes in the cell where each gob would go, and made sure each gob penetrated through the hole and to the other side of the cell. That would keep each gob from detaching from the cell. There is no similar worry about the glass side because good silicone glue (e.g., the aquarium variety; but I just used the DAP transparent standard smelly silicone glue; just don't use the less smelly Silicone II as there are bad rumors about it) will stick super-well to glass. To keep the mirror even with the cell and to space the gobs at 1/4" thickness, insert spacers. I think I had some scrap wood for that. Pencils would also work. Then leave for about two days for the silicone glue to set well. The third photo shows the bottom of the completed mirror box, with three ventilation holes as well as the nice wingnuts on the carriage bolts sticking out of the box. There are, of course, fender washers between the wingnuts and the wood. Congratulations: you have a collimatable primary mirror cell. The three carriage bolts are the collimation bolts. Collimatability is central to amateur Newtonian telescope design--you can make all sorts of things to lax tolerances, and then on the observing field you tighten everything up optically by collimating.

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Step 3: Mirror box

The mirror box is just a box. It makes sense to cut the base and the sides at the same time. The inside of the sides of the box should be enough distance away that you can put carriage bolts in from the inside where you need them to attach the side rockers and the strut. So don't do this step before reviewing the following steps. I made my mirror a little too close to the edges, which means that removing the screws without touching the mirror can be tricky, and I have to adjust the mirror height with the collimation bolts. You can do fancy joinery, but I just used a butt joint with Titebond II and wood screws. I also drilled a bunch of large ventilation holes with the hole saws, making sure to leave space for attaching the rockers and strut. I painted the inside of the mirror box, and of the ventilation holes, flat black, using craft store acrylic paint, on top of my Titebond II + water finish (or maybe a Titebond II + water + black paint finish).

Step 4: Altitude bearings

The altitude bearings are the round semicircles (or round circles, or round moon-shapes, depending on design) on which the telescope moves up and down (i.e., in altitude). The larger they are, the better the balance will be. Ideally, the center of the circles (i.e., if you completed the semicircles to full circles) would be at the center of gravity of the scope with all the optical equipment (eyepiece, finder, etc.) installed. However, different eyepieces have different weight, and with a small scope it's hard to get things right at the center of gravity. Mostly, a small scope will be top-heavy--the top end will want to tip forward. You can fix that by adding counterweights to the mirror box or by adding springs. Or both, as we'll see later. If you have a router, you can just cut your own altitude bearings out of your favorite wood material. I didn't have a router when I made this. But my wife had a round CD case, whose top and bottom were two 3/8" thick particleboard circles, 14" in diameter. She wanted to give this away on craigslist or something, so I claimed it. I then sanded one side of each of the circles, and glued them together (clamping with a pile of bricks). I then had one 3/4" thick particleboard circle. I then cut it in half, and I had two semicircles. I eventually cut further holes to match the ventilation holes on the mirror box. The altitude bearings attach to the mirror box with wingnuts (and fender washers) and carriage bolts. If working with particle board or plywood, it's really important to use some sort of a wood finish on the raw cuts. I used a mix of Titebond II, water and acrylic black paint. For now ignore the spring in the picture--that will be discussed later. The bottom board is for the next step.

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Step 5: Rocker "box"

Dobsonian telescopes ride on a "rocker box". Except that this very low-profile design has more a rocker board than a box. Here's the design. At the bottom there is a 3/4" particleboard circle (black, so it's hard to see under the vinyl record) a little larger than a vinyl record. That circle has a 1/4" hole in the middle, and a carriage bolt going up through it (head on bottom). Under the circle, there are three feet (I used used scrap wooden circles produced by the hole saw when cutting other things). On top of the circle there is a vinyl record, with the carriage bolt coming up through it. On top of the carriage bolt, there is the top assembly. The top assembly is a rectangular piece of particle board (plywood would be better, but I didn't have any), with two pieces of 3/4" pine attached to the sides. Between the top assembly and the vinyl record, there are pads of bondable PTFE, glued with JB Weld to the underside of the top assembly and riding on the vinyl record. This is the "azimuth bearing." The pine boards are angled inward and bondable PTFE is glued in for the altitude bearings to ride on (white squares on photo). There are wooden stops to keep the altitude bearings to jump out, and in the middle there is a wingnut on a home-made PTFE washer to adjust azimuth tension with. Ignore the springs for now. There are many variations on this design. A wider board, with taller side-pieces, would allow the rockers to be further apart, making balance easier. However, it would decrease portability. Oh, and I used a hole saw to make some holes in the bottom of the bottom circle to decrease weight.

Step 6: Strut
My original design called for two struts. The struts would start out far apart, at the ends of the mirror box, and then somewhat narrowing together as they went up, and with the focuser board being mounted to both of them, producing a nice trapezoidal effect. But it turned out that one strut was enough for stability, and so I tossed the other one in the scrap pile, and reduced the size of the focuser plate. In any case, the strut doesn't go straight up, perpendicularly to the bottom of the base plate. While it is flush to one side of the mirror box, it is angled inward. The first photo shows the original design, with two struts and not yet cut down to size. The strut is 1" square poplar. Oak would be better. The poplar was supposed to be a stop-gap, but I stuck with it as it worked well. The strut attaches on the inside of the mirror box, flush against the baseplate (with the bottom trimmed a little at an angle). It has two carriage bolts that come in from the inside of the mirror box, through the mirror box, and are held in place on the back of the scope with fender bolts and wingnuts. I did find that eventually the square hole made by the carriage bolt on the inside of the strut got rounded, and so I resquared it by building it up with JB Weld. This wouldn't be an issue with a harder wood. At the very end of the telescope-making process, and this is definitely optional, I cut the strut in half, with a long diagonal cut, and made the two halves assemble together with four machine screws. The nuts for the machine screws are permanently JB Welded in place. Since the strut is about thirty inches long, cutting it in half makes it possible to fit it into a smaller suitcase and decreases the chance of its breaking in transit. As far as I can tell, when the two halves are assembled, it's about as solid as if it were never cut. The side of the strut that faces the mirror is painted flat black.

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Step 7: Secondary mount and stalk

The secondary is going to attach with a stalk to the focuser board. I cut a mount out of softwood. It's jointed like in the picture to allow for one axis of adjustment. The other axis is rotation around the stalk. The first picture is before I drilled a 1/4" hole for the stalk. I also eventually sanded/cut it down to a smaller size. Obviously, one should paint/finish the secondary mount before attaching the mirror. It might not be a good idea to paint or finish all of the diagonal part where the mirror will go, so the glue doesn't pull off with the paint/finish. One glues the secondary mirror with silicone glue, keeping toothpicks between the mount and the mirror for spacing, with the same reasoning as one uses thick gobs to glue the primary. The last photo on this page is a photo of the gluing process in another scope I was involved with. The secondary mirror's center hangs basically over the center of the primary mirror and in front of the center of the focuser tube, though you can offset it slightly. I initially made the stalk out of threaded rod. In the second picture, the threaded rod passes left-to-right through: 1/4" wingnut, fender washer, focuser board, fender washer, nut pressed against fender washer from inside, then a couple of inches exposed, then another nut, then the secondary mount, and then one more square nut (more on that below). It turned out that the stalk had just enough flex due to gravity to make collimation questionable. So I JB Welded in parallel with it a section of square rod, gluing it with a lot of JB Weld to the two nuts, the one abutting the focuser board fender washer and the one abutting the secondary mount. Two parallel rods will have a lot less flex (at least in the direction that matters). To adjust the tilt of the secondary by hand, I needed hand-adjustable tension on the two axes that the secondary mount can move. One axis, the one perpendicular to

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the stalk, was a machine screw, maybe a #10. I then superglued a larger nut (maybe a 5/16"?) to the smaller nut to make it easily movable by hand. The bond has held up well over the over one year since I've made the scope, though a little wingnut would be better. The other axis has a gray square nut. I actually cast that nut out of JB Weld, making a little squarish mold out of painter's tape and putting a 1/4-20 nut in the middle. Again, I could have bought something, but I wanted a very low-profile hand-adjustable nut and that might be hard to find. It had to be low profile, since I didn't want it sticking out past the shadow of the secondary mirror on the primary mirror.

Step 8: Focuser board and focuser

I hate making focusers. This one was made out of 3/8" (or maybe 5/16") particle board. It has a big hole drilled in the middle with a hole saw, a push-pull focuser attached to it, and an elongated hole for attaching the secondary stalk (this was cut with a mini router, but one could just drill round holes for the ends and just file one's way between them). The telescope strut screws to the board, and a red-dot finder also attaches to it. The shape changed in construction. The initial more expansive shape was for the two-strut design, and I eventually cut the board as small as I could make it to save weight at the top of the telescope after switching to a one-strut design. Let's start with the focuser. The idea is simple: there is a draw tube that slides between three PTFE pads, with one of the pads having adjustable tension. The tube is pulled gently forward and back, with a bit of a twist making things even easier. So, one first cuts three wooden posts that will attach to the focuser board around a hole large enough for the draw tube. One glues bondable PTFE (with JB Weld in that case; now I'd probably use a super glue) to two of the posts. The third is slightly more complicated--see the second photo. I took a thin piece of metal (maybe I cut it from one of those metal thingies that cover expansion card slots in computers) about the size of the face of the post. I glued a PTFE pad to one side of the metal (again, JB Weld). I then glued the bottom half of the metal to the post (JB Weld, seemingly as always in that phase of my life), leaving the top half unglued. I then put a thumbscrew through the post. The thumbscrew pushes the metal, which pushes the PTFE against the draw tube, and the tension is thereby adjusted. Of course the location of the three posts needs to be fine-tuned with the thickness of the draw-tube. Attaching the posts to the focuser board proved hard. They were very hard to keep in place long enough to glue. And glue wasn't enough--glue would just pull away with the top layer of particleboard. So, I temporarily glued them with something, then drilled in and attached woodscrews from the bottom, and then finally JB Welded them in place, with a very generous bead around them. Unfortunately, they didn't end up as square to the hole as I wish, and I have some wobble. In the third photo, you see the whole assembly. The draw tube is PVC. The eyepiece size this is meant to work with is 1.25". Unfortunately, I couldn't find any PVC tubing with an inner diameter close enough to 1.25". I think I finally got some electrical conduit with inner diameter 1.35" in the hardware store. Really cheap stuff--I bought about 12 feet for about three dollars, and had enough left over over the couple of inches I used here to make a tripod for a binocular mount. So something had to be done to bridge the distance.

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Now, I had all this 1/16" bondable PTFE--way more than the small squares I needed for the altazimuth mount. I had about 0.10" to narrow down the inner diameter of the conduit. I took the PTFE and cut some 1/4" wide strips, about two inches in length. I glued them inside my prospective draw tube (JB Weld, need you ask?), spaced at around 120 degrees. You should be able to see them in the third photo. It was still too snug for my eyepieces. So I just used a flat file to file the PTFE down. I added a thumb-screw for good measure, but it's not really needed. Unfortunately, it's still snug. It's hard to remove an eyepiece without shifting the scope (but that's also a function of the finicky balance). Eventually, as in the third photo, a red dot finder got attached. And the focuser board screws onto the strut (Philips screws, with nuts permanently JB Welded to the other side of the strut). I keep on thinking of upgrading to a super-light helical Crayford focuser. Too bad that I can't make one myself. (I've made a helical Crayford, but it was quite heavy.) Attaching the stalk in the right place requires collimating the scope. There are instructions in various places online. I used a home-made crosshairs laser collimator for alignment. Also, for collimating you want to attach a center mark on your primary. I use a donut-shaped ring reinforcer. It's tricky getting it exactly centered. I do it by printing out a template of the right size.

Step 9: Light shield

In a scope without a tube, there should be a light shield behind the secondary mirror, opposite the focuser. I thought long and hard about various complex designs. And then I went for one that looks really weird, but is very cheap and light. I deformed a coat-hanger so it still had a hook but the main part became a circle. I hung some folded (and duct-taped together at the center) 1/4" foam board (which I picked up by a Dumpster once) from it with wire ties. I had an extra hole near the top of the strut from a design decision I changed my mind about. The hook of the coat-hanger goes there, and then it all hangs down. Doesn't work in wind. But fortunately at a dark site you don't really need it.

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Step 10: Balance issues

Remember those springs in some of the photos? Well, here's how they got to be there. Partly because of the super-low-profile rocker, the scope has some balance issues. Specifically, with anything but a very light eyepiece, it wants to tilt backwards when it is pointing close to zenith (the eyepiece sticks out backwards and tips it) and it wants to tip forwards when it is pointing closer to the horizon. A good deal of the problem can be handled by adding an extension spring on each side. One end of is screwed to the rocker box. The other end goes over to one of the carriage bolts on that side that are used to attach the rocker box. This helps a lot, especially with the near-zenith issue. There is still a problem with heavier eyepieces closer to the horizon. To fix this, I hang a small drawstring baggie with a weight inside from one of the wingnuts attaching the strut for such lower elevations (I can often leave the baggy in place for higher elevations--it then sits on the ground and doesn't contribute much). I don't need to pack a counterweight with me when traveling by air, just the bag, since I should always be able to find some scrap metal, or a rock, or, if all else fails, an eyepiece to put in the bag at the destination.

Step 11: Packing for air travel

I made a thick carboard cover for the sides of the mirror box (covering up the side ventilation holes, and cut a piece of see-through plastic to cover the top of the mirror box for travel, and another piece to cover up the ventilation holes on the bottom). I usually put some paper towel on top of the mirror and then some bubble wrap, all under the plastic cover. I realize the paper towel may scratch the mirror, and if I had a more rigid plastic top cover, I wouldn't worry about it. But I do worry about something denting my thin plastic top cover. As a final step, I drilled an extra hole in the baseplate of the mirror box near a corner, so I can bolt the secondary mount, with secondary, inside the mirror box (with a wingnut on the bottom side) for travel. In the second photo, the secondary is the bubble wrapped thingy in the corner of the box. I put the mirror box in my backpack. It puzzles airline security most of the time, but I haven't had trouble--I just need to allow a few more minutes for inspection. Dressing nicely and being generally non-suspicious-looking may help. Everything else--strut halves, screws, screwdriver, bolts, focuser board, focuser tube, secondary stalk, altitude bearings, rocker box, light shield go in a suitcase, in zippable bags as needed. I protect the pointy ends of the strut halves (remember they're cut diagonally) with a bubble envelope. I pack eyepieces and laser collimator either in bolt cases or boxes with bubble wrap or bubble envelopes. I've taken to labeling everything (e.g., "fragile - telescope optics - eyepiece" or "laser collimator for telescope") so airline security isn't too badly puzzled when they open the suitcase for inspection. Last time I traveled, I put most of the equipment in a duffle bag, which I

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then put in the suitcase among clothes. In the duffle bag, I included my nametag from our local astronomy club and two brochures for our astronomy club, thereby giving it all a bit more legitimacy perhaps. Everything survived transport well, except one eyepiece had a broken plastic eye-shield (which I superglued back to functionality).

Step 12: What have I seen with this scope?

This is a telescope I like for wide views (a 2" focuser would improve it!), especially when I travel. I successfully used it for a star party on one of the Gulf Islands in British Columbia, and I think people enjoyed the views. Here's what I've seen through, from memory and logs: Terrestrial: Boats and ships, distant killer whales. Works pretty well for terrestrial targets with a 30mm eyepiece. Of course you have to face backwards or the image is upside down. Non-terrestrial solar system objects: Moon, Jupiter and some of its moon, a ringed Saturn. It works well enough to impress people who aren't experienced amateur astronomers, but it's really not a scope optimized for high-magnification planetary work. Deep space: M8, M13, M17, M20, M22, M24, M27, M31, M32, M39, M42, M44, M51, M57, M71, M81, M82, M103, Veil Nebula, North American Nebula, Double Cluster, ET Cluster,

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