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(meteorobs) Astroscan and Meteors
At 05:43 PM 3/26/97 -0500, you wrote:
>Amazing how well that plastic wears over the years, isn't it. ;> Didn't even
>know there WERE AstroScans 25 years ago.
>
>LG
>
Hi to all ye misinformed.
Imust apologise. My memory is playing tricks on me. I thought my
Astroscan came before my daughter, but apparently thats not true. I dug
out the users manual and I find it is dated 1976. So my Astroscan is only
twenty one years old, which incidentally, they referred to as "The Edmund
Wide Field Telescope, No. 2001". It is holding up remarkably well. It
is still its original shiney bright red color, even though it has a few
scratches and marks on it. The only way its performance may have
deteriorated is because the primary mirror silvering is showing a bad one
inch long mark at one place on the edge of the primary mirror. This is
remarkable because it spends most of its life in the back of my car, with no
special attention. I use it mainly at school observing nights where many
kids refuse to believe it is a telescope until I tell them to "Look in there".
Wayne mentioned using it for spotting meteors with it. I would like to know
how that is done, because the biggest problem I have with it is finding an
object. Thats a real pain in the asteroid. I have made a bracket to mount
it to my video camera tripod, but I still have problems finding the Moon,
sometimes:-)
It was interesting that two friends came round last night who are
experimenting with mounting industrial video cameras to a telescope. They
had bought one of those miniature jobbies, rated at five lux for $85 and
wanted to see how it performed through my Astroscan. Unfortunately, some
clouds had just rolled in so we had to resort to street lights and neighbors
windows ( ;-()) We just held the camera to the eyepiece and were
surprised by the results. The street lights were completely washed out and
other dimmer lights came in, just fine. The image was noticeably better at
the center of the FOV and deteriorated very badly towards the edges.
Without the scope we could pick up all the visible street lights. One
friend took my red penlight and walked along the street. We could still see
it on the monitor,(still without the telescope) when he was two hundred feet
away. Even more remakably, I put my hand over the flaslight and the
camera picked up the red glow through the back of my hand, even thogh it was
difficult to see with the naked eye. These cameras are mainly sensitive to
red, and infra-red, and it shows. One of these friends was so impressed
that he has now ordered a camera with a .015 lux CCD to see how that
performs.
We should be able to pick up some pretty dim meteors with that. (Finish
on subject)
Ron