Hi Patrick It would be good if you all could make a trip out. We've talked about SLAS'ers coming out and showing you all a good time and getting you under some dark Hawaiian sky. This past Saturday was my 1st viewing of the Gegenschein, it surprised me as we were having issues w/ the AF AMOS station next too us and their bright red night lighting, it tends to wipe out the north view and ruin any dark adaptation. Needless to say, seeing the Gegenschein was a real surprise, then I imaged it and that took a bunch of digital darkroom CS2 processing. But yes, it is dark here, the observatory is getting close to operational, we're pulling out the 12" LX200 and putting in a Meade LXD750 that will allow different scopes to be mounted and controlled remotely. But yes, come visit, bring fins and snorkels too!! Aloha Rob

On 16 Oct 2007, at 13:20, Joe Bauman wrote:

I don't know if this was covered so far in the discussions (haven't had time to check a lot of email lately) -- but at least in the days when my ancient 8" was made, the corrector plate supposedly was mated to the rest of the OTA to eliminate errors in one or the other. I remember one was required to realign it exactly as it was before it was cleaned.

The first time I took my first C-8 apart I had the table all clean and spiffy like an operating room table. And the procedure took much of the night. But just like parking a car or landing an airplane (or in Guy's case, disassembling and reassembling a machine gun in the dark with a blind fold on during a blizzard while hanging upside down from a tree), after you've done it a few times it becomes much easier and one can get rather laid back about it. Putting the corrector back in as it came out is important but not all that difficult. Just be sure to mark the outside edge of the corrector and the inside edge of the tube so the corrector goes back in with the same orientation. Oft times there are cork spacers around the corrector's circumference so be sure and mark their locations too so that when you put everything back together the same spacers go back into the same places they came out. Cheers, patrick