Jun 17

ReCap! June 17th Society Meeting

Meetings get better and better… thanx especially to the presentations made by Paul Saeger and Samuel Santiago…. Paul’s was so relevant to what all of us experience not only when starting into this hobby, but tend to experience at the start of each season… humorous because its true…  right?  🙂 Sam’s talk was really a plethora of info too… it stretched beyond the show and tell of an electronic focuser or two but into what focusing means… problems encountered when focusing, focusing aides, types of manual focusers and types of electronic focusers…. pros and cons of electronic focusers, and 4 or 5 different electronic focusers were there on display… of course this was followed by another great Q&A session… We plan on putting the (electronic)FOCUSERS presentation on the web site followed by your asking questions and providing your experiences… it’ll be a pretty cool blog/forum topic! Cecil Ward brought in his new guide system including a very nice Svbony doublet, a highly adjustable mounting system, and a nice ZWO camera… all very practical, nice quality, and very versatile. We then had a great discussion on the Observatory Relocation with report outs on Building Specs and Design, Equipment Requirements, and Benefits… […]

Apr 16

Another GREAT meeting last nite!

Hi all! Another great meeting last nite… non-stop, and interesting discussion from the 6:30 PM social half hour until 9:00 PM… then most everyone met at Village Inn to continue sharing astronomical antidotes until nearly midnite! Please let Jeff know if you want to be I involved in any of the Observatory Relocation Discussion Group committees! Welcome new member Paul Saeger!!! Clear Skies, Jeff

Mar 18

March 18th meeting at the Planetarium!

Great Quad Cities Astronomical Society meeting tonite! 27 in attendance. Held at the Augustana College John Deere Planetarium… and the club program was a private showing and demo of the new planetarium! One of the perks of membership!!!

Feb 16

SCT Collimation Party – Feb 16 2019

What a great time, and a great example of what we’d like our club to be… helping each other grow in our common interest… astronomy! On the way to the event, at St Ambrose University McCarthy Hall room 003, I picked up a couple dozen donuts to have for munchies at the event… donuts and astronomy seem to go hand in hand! Byron, Sam, Mike and I got there about 9:30 Am to make sure that the room was open, and that we had the area clean for the incoming scopes. We set up 2 EQ mounts for those that had their SCT’s set up in that manner, and we left a clearing by the door for folks that brought in their scopes on fork mounts. We had a couple boxes of tools to make any adjustments needed as well as 2 of the HoTech CT Collimators… we can do 2 scopes at a time! Around 10:00 AM, folks started coming in with their SCT’s… we had scheduled people in roughly 1 hour increments, but advised that we could remain very flexible… and all worked quite well! Basically speaking, while Byron was tweaking on collimating 1 scope, Sam and Mike […]

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