I also scanned in, my first attempt at astro-photography from the mid 60's. I clamped a borrowed 35 mm camera to my Unitron and hand guided for about 15 minutes. I was trying to catch the star field around Lyra. The bright star is Vega. This was also my first attempt at developing and printing. Talk about beginner's luck, a meteor was captured in the frame. The other was the same night and was my attempt to capture M31. I can hear someone saying this would be deleted today. As a youngster, at that time, this was great fun. There was magic in chemicals, rolls of film and paper in a dark room, working under red light. I eagerly watched the images appear in the pans, it didn't get any better than that as the saying goes. My, how things have changed!
Clear Sky - Rich
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By the way, if you'd like to check out my blog on an observatory from the 1960s that has reopened, check out this link.
hjrobservatory@blogspot.com
We had a 12.5 inch telescope that was built in 1962 and the observatory was built in 1964. The rededication involved recoating the mirror in the 12.5 inch and refiguring it. The refiguring it either happened by Ken Novak or a local astronomer named Mike Manyak Jr. Mike Manyak Jr. passed away in 1998. The observatory was closed basically to the public from the last 1980s as far as we can tell but still owned by the Lincoln Park school district in Lincoln Park Michigan. We reopened it in 2009 and it's now functioning again after renovations. Anyway, that's just a little about the observatory I often blog about. We have an old mirror in there with the old tube from the old setup. We're not sure what will happen with the tube, right now it's a display piece at the observatory but it takes up some valuable floor space at the observatory. We had a dedication of the observatory. The Rating for the mirror that was damaged was something like .97 or .98 which is very close to perfect.
I'm having a feeling looking at the sticker on the back of the mirror that it refers to the mirror support and not the redoing of the mirror itself, which could be possible. Did Ken do any mirror refinishing?
Greg Pvideo@aol.com
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