Ok ... you asked for it ...
Hardware things not published:
A nice grid/concentric circle transparent inserts for Celestron 9x50
finder scopes. This by far is my #1 invaluable addition and used
constantly, just don't go solar observing with it in the finder ... it
melts.
Some of you SkyAtlas 200 users already know this but a simple, small
little 1 degree grid overlay suitable for usage with SkyAtlas 2000 and
used it all the time. (I have been searching for better lamination that
is more transparent and have found it just last week!) This is still in
'tweek mode'. Many of the SkyAtlas 2000 users will personally see more
about this later. It is just easier to deal with than the supplied
large plastic sheet.
A telrad mod that uses resistors to heat the glass. Last night in
heavy dew situation it did not dew up once so it works quite nicely,
love it. I gotta wire my 9x50 finder up before next night out.
A modified battery case (thanks Greg) that has built in voltage
indicator and a 110V inverter all in one. Love it, use it all the time.
Hardware things 'published' in links off of
http://www.astrospotter.com in 'Custom Astronomy Tools' . Go there for
details.
A gizmo called 'astrospotter' which was meant to be a poor man's (or
students) aid to find or identify objects easily. This tool is a sub
$20 tool that is for people just learning the sky and I used it a lot in
my early days before I had a nice mount and before I knew the skies well.
Software 1: MapTool which is a tool that draws grids over the top of a
windows XP application and allows rotation, resizing and scaling the
grids to units of your choice. This has allowed me to make finder
charts that look nice and has allowed me to place degree based grides
over any area of a map such as near the pole so I always deal in degrees
and not in RA units which are un-natural to a finder scope.
Software 2: MkMegaStar5List.exe A windows tool (from perl script) to
accept simple lists that have objects like 'ngc 7731' or 'IC 405'
which I strip out of other lists and turn them into MegaStar5 observing
lists.
I basically use all of the above,
Mark
richardn22@No-Spam wrote:
> I thought it might be fun to have an ATM/Gadget discussion.? Other than a telescope, what have you built to aid or improve your night out observing?
>
>
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Received on Sun Mar 02 17:50:50 2008