RTMC 2005 Photo Gallery
Saturday 5/28/2005
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I woke-up late,
about 9:10am and started the long drive from my house, near Cal State University
Los Angeles, to the RTMC in Big Bear 100 miles away, at 9:40am. Luckily, I
prepared everything (money & gas) the night before, so I zipped along the
freeway and got to Camp Oaks about 1.5 hours later; about 11:15am. Things
didn't look too busy, as I noticed a great absence of cars on the sides of the
road leading up to the main RTMC site. The volunteer Boy Scouts did their
usual efficient jobs of collecting the entrance money and directed me to one of
the interior paring sites on the right of the road and about 700 feet from
the RTMC dinning/lecture hall. It was getting hot so I downed my sunhat.
It was at that moment that I noticed a strangely familiar, old, topless man.
No other than John Dobson, the old monk who started the "Dobson revolution" of
large aperture, portable Newtonians in the late 1970s. He seemed happy
soaking up the sun and being recognized. Next I noticed some members
of the old
HR gang
(led by UCLA
Professor of Astronomy, Art Huffman)
Klaus
Brasch, Mike Mayerchak.
Another notable, officiating at RTMC was
Dr. Alson
Wong
who is shown above poising gracefully. I
quickly stopped by the Sky & telescope both and Astronomy Magazine's booth.
I didn't recognize anybody from S&T, but Astronomy's booth was manned by no
other than David Eicher, Editor & Chief! I talked with him later on at
Tony Hallas's picture sale booth. Dan Goldman of "AstroDon"
was at his booth selling his wares. Sadly, he's still experimenting
on the "clear guide window" model of his filters. I told him I look
forward to him having this feature, as its almost impossible to pick a guide
star using any of the "dense" filter such as Blue, H-Alpha, and the more exotic,
narrow-band ones like Sulfur II and OIII. Tony Hallas's booth was humming
with activity as people gobbled-up his huge 50x44" Hubble prints of M51 over
$100 per/print); I wonder how many Franklins Tony scooped up :) ? Good
friend and neighbor,
Bob, Janice, and Alex(2 yrs old) Fera helped out and
compared notes on the many superb large aperture cassegrain lurking about.
Bob seemed infatuated with an Italian made beauty sporting an open truss design
with a flower metal primary mirror cover. This 16" RC was going for about
$20k. Another telescope the "BoyZ" were in love with was
the 20" aperture Dall-Kirkham cassegrain presented by Celestron; this baby
is in the mid $30k range :( . I got my shopping objectives done ( and then
some) by purchasing an extra telerad+base, a Televue photo-paracorr, a neat (but
at $30 expensive) pen-laser bracket for mounting my green laser on one of my
tube assembly, the books Uranometria Vol III (D.S. Field Guide), Star Testing
Astronomical Telescopes, and (The Best of) Amateur Telescope Making Journal, Vol
II; I looked at Vol I and thought Vol II was better for my ATM purposes.
I briefly say and talked to Ed Byers who's still going strong at mount making in
Barstow, CA. I also got to talk with Steve Bisque of Bisque Instruments
and got some good pointers on using Sky 6. I stayed late with Tony,
Daphne, Bob, and Janice (and Alex of course!) looking for my elusive quarry,
Mr. Tom Scott. Tony told me he sold his long live Schaeffer mount in
favor of an AstroPhysics 1200GTO. Bob Fera mentioned that he's moved into
his newly constructed house, but that its still being constructed! Bill &
Sally Fletcher were no shows for the 2nd year in a row at RTMC; rumour has
it that their Malibu Pyramid palace is up for sale, probably in the low to
medium Million $s. Richard Fletcher and his wife hung out for awhile,
They told us they dont go to Pinos anymore but do their astronomy at the Polaris
(Lockwood Valley) site. Richard also explained the curious absense of
CCDer Gary Stevens. It seems Mr. Steven lost interest in astroimaging and
went on to RC (radio control) modeling! (no more
APODs for Gary!) After eating with the Fera's I spotted my
elusive target and found Tom Scott with the Mr. Mathis. Before talking
business, we helped Mathias load his humongous 20" geared German equatorial
mount. We were told that the max capacity on this huge mount was about
350lbs (3x that of a AP1200 mount!). Of course, the price was also OVER 3x
the cost of an AP1200 mount! :( It took the three of us about 5
min.'s
to move each of the 5 separate major components, the last being the 16"
diameter, 2 foot high STEEL pier; about 100lbs! After this I and Tom
walked to where his friend and he were camped (RV'd) out next to a 24" dobson.
After a nice chat on optics and future and past projects I excused myself for
the long ride home. Another enjoyable experience with the old Pros of
amateur astronomy!
Go to
http://www.jrfoster.com/
John Dobson
