FIRST LIGHT

Sitting around a fire in Nylsvley with Eric Brindeau, Bert van Winsen, Peter Baxter and Gerhard Koekemoer (and after drinking perhaps too much astronomy fluid), it was decided that, since finishing my mirror 7 years earlier, it was high time I had a working scope. A star party had been planned for July, and Val was going to go with her 6" telescope in working order. Bert had already built a really lightweight fibreglass tube and mirror cell for me, and I had purchased one of Walter Bacchio’s focusers at the ScopeX event. The following weekend, at Gwyn Baxter’s kind suggestion, we all got together at the Baxter home, and work began. This included detailed plans for the tube, which Eric project managed using his CAD software. Gerhard generously gave me the secondary mirror and spider. Peter put together a really superb Dobsonian mount, and Bert supplied an old storage disk to assist with a smooth movement for right ascension between the base and the mount. A "box" was also made to cradle the tube into the mount as well and handle the declination. Eric built from binocular casings and lenses, a very special 8 x 50 finder for my scope. Gwyn looked after us, and kept us supplied with food and drink, and really put up with a lot that day. At the end of it, the mirror and focuser were collimated, and we tested out the scope, but the sky was disappointingly overcast, and seeing was very poor. I took the scope home, in some anxiety (I was so scared that the mirror would not live up to all the work put into the scope), and painted the inside of the tube and the mount. All the while I counted the hours till the star party …

Well, the trip to Monk’s Cowl in the Drakensburg turned out to be truly "awesome" (hey Eric!), and my mirror saw it’s real first light. Eric helped me take "Mrs Ples" (another story) through "his" (another story) paces, and I was so amazed, relieved, overjoyed, to find that we were able to see so clearly, many objects during the four nights we spent out there. These objects included Omega Centauri and Eta Carina, the edge on galaxy NGC4945, M6 and M7 in Scorpio, M10, M12 and M14 in Orphiucus, and even B86, a dark nebula in Sagittarius. We also looked at the Lagoon Nebula and the Trifid, and many other objects.

My appreciation for all that Eric, Bert, Peter and Gerhard have done for me is beyond words, and I consider myself really fortunate to belong to a society where people help each other in this way. Thanks guys, it has been a great learning experience, and hey, I’m having soooo much fun!!

Now I’m counting the hours to the next trip!!!

Val Fraser