On Wednesday 03 October 2012 14:11:01 Kent A. Reed did opine: > On 9/30/2012 11:45 PM, Kirk Wallace wrote: > > I'm playing with the thought of putting a vacuum deposition system > > together to coat telescope mirrors with aluminum. It looks like I > > could > > Kirk: > > I forgot to ask. What's the biggest mirror you contemplate coating? > > On the one hand, that's a technical question since it affects the sizing > of the vacuum chamber, vacuum pumps, and the coating mechanism, and also > affects one's ability to coat the mirror uniformly. > > On the other hand, it's purely personal curiosity. My long-ago partner > in astronomical crimes and I never managed to grind anything bigger than > an 8in dia. mirror for a classic Newtonian reflecting telescope. The > optical figure wasn't great and we used wet chemistry to silver the > mirror so it wasn't so great either. Fortunately, the seeing conditions > in and around Albuquerque, New Mexico in the late-1950s, early-1960s > were superb and even our crappy scope could give us a number of thrills. > > Regards, > Kent
I'd add that I have a Meade DS-10 that has some mold spots on the main mirror so it could use a re-coat, so I am a potential customer too, Kirk. But "seeing" here in WV is an oxymoron somewhat like military intelligence, so I've been contemplating donating it to the good folks at Chaco Canyon National Park in NM, where the seeing is generally very good. They have a small observatory there, public welcome, and could probably make 100's of times the use of it that I ever will hear. They use it for star parties several times a year since its 50+ miles to anyplace that lights up the sky. I have done some work for the NPS, both at Mt. Rushmore and at Chaco Canyon. Great people. I put up the first tv antenna system at Chaco back in the 70's. Before that, all they had was very poor radio & drive to Santa Fe for the papers & mail. You could say they were starved for news 99% of the time. Cheers, Gene -- "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) My web page: <http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene> is up! I used to work in a fire hydrant factory. You couldn't park anywhere near the place. -- Steven Wright ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
