From: Milton Aupperle <milton@outcastsoft.com>

Date: March 30, 2009 10:21:40 AM MDT

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: [Astro_IIDC] Re: New file uploaded to Astro_IIDC

Mark;

The Grasshopper I bough was $2961 USD. When I ordered it, the canadian dollar was worth 3.7 cents more than the American dollar was due to a very favorable surge in the exchange rate. Now it's reversed again and the camera would cost anywhere from $3500 to $4,000 CDN today.

I really suggest you get comfortable with the Flea 2 your before "graduating" to a new much more expensive camera (it was 2 years before I moved up to a larger format camera) especially for DSO's. Polar Alignment, guiding, selecting guide stars, image processing, learning turbulence tells and other aspects  take time to master. Doing DSO's with a mono camera with filter wheel has taken me almost 6 months to get used too and work out all the details for correct exposures for each channel (i.,e. with the AstroDon E series filters, I need exposure times of about 1.3 Red 1 Green 1.1 Blue to balance RGB stars properly).

As to an observatory.

Why not create a small slanted top roll off shed so that at least your scope is out of the rain?

http://www.david-higgins.com/Astronomy/construction.htm

http://www.mapug-astronomy.net/AstroDesigns/MAPUG/Obsrvtorys.htm

This month alone we've had nearly 1 meter of wet snow and luckily my scope is still dry (another 25 cm on Saturday night), which is roughly 3 times the amount of snow we normally get for March. I will have to replace the BBQ Bag Cover I use this spring as after 4 years the sun damage has made it become brittle and their are cracks in it. I "double bag" my scope and have a thin transparent huge garbage bag on the inside over the scope and mount as a final rain barrier. But Alberta is a dry climate and unless i'ts raining cats and dogs, the humidity is normally in the 30% range even in the summer.

Milton Aupperle

On 30-Mar-09, at 4:07 AM, Mark Gaffney wrote:

Hi Milton, It`s bucketing down rain here at present! Even in fairly

light rain a certain amount of moisture gets through the plastic tarps

to the scope. I don`t know how well the scope can cope with this in

the long run but it is a worry! The basic manually operated Home model

of the Sirius Observatory is $7000. I`d like at least to put the scope

on a new base hopefully prepared in size for the addition of the

Observatory if it happens. I was looking at a new Mac Mini later in

the year but you have put the germ of an idea there about the

Grasshopper. I think you said they were around $3000 USD? At least

making a cooler for one dosen`t seem the obstacle it once was! Maybe

the Telegizmous scope cover will provide a solution to my moisture

problems when obtained, probably in June. You`d have your problems

with ice & snow, where mine is torrential rain! Mark.

On 30/03/2009, at 3:46 PM, Milton Aupperle wrote: