Some of you are aware that I have been working on an 18" cassegrain based on the CPT18 frame sold by Mark Wagner's Resource International and mirrors from Optical Mechanics (Torus Pro-Spec).
Today I got word from OMI that my primary is boxed up and ready to ship. I guess I will have it next week. The secondary should be arriving in a couple of weeks roughly.
So first light is getting closer and closer.
Maybe I will have it all operational by the time we have the TAC party on the 23rd of Oct
Here is a webpage covering the development to date.
Mark has been a big help in this project and I've had lots of advice from the likes of Phil "Dr. Cass" Chambers and of course the thing that sort of got it kicked off in my brain was seeing Ray Gralak's first light experience with his CPT18 Newtonian out at Fremont Peak waaaay back in mid 2001. Ray started turning out some nice images during the summer of 2003 that further motivated me to build a variant.
Of course being primarily a guy that likes long focal lengths to chase the tiny planetaries, detail areas in big nebulae and tiny galaxies, I decided to move mine in a Cassegrain direction but with the option of using it as a Newt if the need or desire arose.
I have prepared a webpage that documents a lot of the project. If interested have a look:
http://www.narrowbandimaging.com/cc18_page.htm
Received on Wed Sep 29 15:09:52 2004