Ad Astra Observatory

Time to upgrade some stuff.

I finally lost patience with my Meade reticle eyepiece. It’s the eyepiece I use the most, but it’s designed for people who manually guide; the reticle is adjustable. This “feature” means that for the normal use I put it to (centering things in the FOV), it really sucks.

Celestron’s unit has double fixed lines, and is compatible with my current illuminator, and I found it on clearance, so I have one on the way.

While that’s coming, I decided to pick up another finder dovetail base, because I have a plan to convert a 9×50 finder into a guidescope, and I’ll need a base to mount it up.

I have the 9×50 “soon to be guidescope” finder on the way, too.

Also, since I am probably going to be using Pumpkin as an imaging scope and not so much as a guidescope (at least, not in the near future…), I ordered some 3″ scope rings. That way, I will not have to worry about orthogonality with the guider rings that Pumpkin is currently using.

Finally, I have noticed that my 1.5″ extension is not quite right for plopping eyepieces into the focuser, so I picked up a couple of 2″ parfocalizing rings, so that I can set it up properly.

whew. Time to go through my gear and sell off some unneeded junk of yesteryear.