2019 Convention Reports

Al Nagler, founder of Tele Vue, wrote about his experiences this year and rembereances past convention in a recent blog posting.

Al Naglers blog about Stellafane 2019 (at TeleVue.com)

Peter Pekurar wrote this report and shared it with us:

This was my third Stellafane so here’s a short (okay somewhat long) report with some highlights that were of interest to me.

Stellafane is a telescope makers convention (Vs a normal observing type star party) that takes place in the mountains of Vermont allegedly next to Homer Simpson’s home town of Springfield. The town is small, quite pretty with mountains all around. Cell reception was very spotty when we discovered quickly that our modern vehicle navigation system failed to display maps. Thank goodness for my tried and true Garmin!!

Attendance this year I believe was around 900 which I was told is down a little due to weather concerns. The night sky was excellent 3 nights and visually can look almost as good as Manitoulin Island in Ontario Canada which we Ontarians use as the reference for good skies.

Alan Ward, Eldon and I drove down and armed with a very unique and portable coating machine that is mostly home built sporting a bell jar capable of coating mirrors up to 10.25” mirrors. Alan tried bringing the machine to Stellafane last year but it sprung leaks that we could not fix in time. Over the past year Alan and Eldon replaced all of the o-rings and got the machine running really well and is now able to achieve coating vacuum in about 20 minutes.

A big concern was how to get the machine into the USofA but we managed to do it and the machine survived the trip just fine. I have a whole story around this topic! Alan wanted to enter the machine into the Special Item Category of the competition so it needed to be on the Hill near the Pink club house. Unfortunately that meant we had to place the coating machine outside on a significant slope. The coating machine received tremendous interest from attendees so Alan was busy from Thursday morning to Saturday evening providing free coatings. The thought of free coatings must have been too irresistible to pass up because mirrors came out of the wood work and started showing up everywhere. Alan managed to coat 15 mirrors and more were waiting. In between coating runs Alan explained how the machine worked and answered many, many questions. I believe Alan went a little bit nuts to simplify the process and use it as a teaching tool because he added Bluetooth automation, a TV screen, iPad and cell phone connectivity, etc. He wanted the mirror owner to push the buttons and coat their own mirrors. The 32” TV mounted to the front was there to help teach folks how the machine works.

On Thursday evening, Alan ran a special event “Twilight Glow Pumpdown” coating, organized by Patrick Dodson  specifically for the Springfield Telescope Makers membership. Patrick wanted the members to see the incredibly beautiful purple plasma ion bombardment glow discharge as onlookers watched it turn from an intense purple to pure white then, instantly flame out as the vacuum continued to increase. It was quite a beautiful sight. Over the whole event I think Alan spoke to hundreds of people about this incredible little machine and I feel he made a significant contribution to the 2019 convention. Unfortunately Alan must have been disqualified from the competition or overlooked by the judges because he did not win anything for his effort. Disappointed, Alan told me that seeing the smiles on the faces of all the people he helped and interacted with gave him all the pleasure and satisfaction he needed. I think he’s an awesome person and extremely giving!

George Roberts presented an instrumental talk about the use of the Bath Interferometer. George did a wonderful job explaining how the interferometer worked and demonstrated the important features of Dale Eason’s fabulous DFTFringe software. George presented in the large Pavilion and he must have had 50-75 people in attendance. The Interferometry group continues to make steady and VERY significant progress towards helping to adopt interferometry an increasingly valuable tool for the amateur telescope builder. Imagine that for a mere $50 you can build a device which can test mirrors to 100th wave. George and I took the opportunity to have lunch together and get to know each other a bit. George is an outstanding ambassador for interferometry testing of astronomical mirrors. I feel this was one of the important presentations at the convention this year.

The third significant talk / demo was my spray silvering demo. Patrick Dodson added it to the News and Events page because he felt it was important to get the word out. I’d like to thank Read Predmore and Ken Slater for recognizing the importance that low cost silvering can make to this hobby and helping me in so many ways to get this setup. I’d like to also thank Patrick and Steve Dodson (aka Stargazer Steve) for all their incredible support they gave to Alan and I. They are all wonderful and supportive folks! These folks working behind the scenes make important things happen. I’d also like to also thank Angel Gilding for helping with chemicals, answering so many of my questions and adding the silver protection chemical to their offering, making it easy for amateurs to obtain the materials they need. The OSW group wanted a one stop shop to buy all materials and this is it. The silver protector is not yet listed on their web site but can be ordered now by sending an email to them asking for a product called Angel Guard.

I made this cute little advertisement that we moved around to get people’s curiosity going and inform people about the demo. It was just a simple and cheap dollar store picture frame that I silvered but it was very effective and I had all sorts of people commented on it. Paul Valleli instantly pointed out that the glass was imperfect but to me, it did not matter because it achieved it’s goal. The ad ended up on top of Alan’s coating machine for most of the weekend as he had a continuous stream of people around his machine.

My demo started with PowerPoint presentation outlining why I became interested in silvering (ie. my 24” mirror that needed a $1500 coating). I had one slide on the OSW group listing a number of innovations that have and continue to come from the group. I gave credit to all of the folks from OSW who made significant contributions to developing this process (Howard Banich, Jerry Merz, Rob Brown and myself (for helping to refine it). Unfortunately, my projector / monitor did not arrive so I looked a little silly hand holding a laptop during the talk portion of my demo. It worked though.

I mixed the chemicals about 3 hours early so I could test the chemistry on a 6” mirror. The test resulted in a very nice looking mirror so I was good to go for the main event. Some of you may recall that I ran numerous tests the week prior to determine a concentration that was suitable for outside air temperature / humidity levels. I’m glad I ran those tests because I chose to run the silvering at 50% dilution and even at that the first mirror showed some silver burn so I chose to recoated it. I learned a bit about chemistry and the effect outdoor environments can have on it.

We planned the demo in the ATM tent which quickly became so full of people that the entire rear portion of the tent had to be removed to accommodate everyone. It was standing room only for many and I believe we had about 50 attendees.
The demo ran well. When I finished the first coating and flipped the first mirror down so the audience could see the mirror, one could hear gasps from the audience in combination with a standing applause as they saw a piece of glass become a highly reflective mirror. That was cool! The whole demo lasted about 1.5 hrs during which time I silvered a 12.5” mirror twice, a 14.5” and a 6”. My presentation slides will be linked on the Stellafane site soon if anyone wants to see them. Howard and I also still need to finish our silvering article so it too can be linked to other sites as well.

Dave Kelly installed his 12.5” freshly silvered mirror into his beautiful telescope and we observed with it that same night. So many people wanted to look through Dave’s scope that I could barely get a peek. I have to say that the silver made it perform better than any 12.5” that I’ve ever looked through. I hung around Dave’s telescope long enough to see the Dumbell nebula but I really wanted to examine the coating’s performance on the beautiful colour of the stars in the Double Cluster of Perseus. Everyone who was there and especially Dave was really pleased with the mirror’s performance.

One of my highlights was the opportunity to spend almost two full days with my friend Larry Shaper who’s from the Vermont area. Larry and I met in 2016 when I brought my 12.5” f/2.8 Hobbit Scope to the Hill and we’ve been in contact ever since. Here’s a photo of Larry’s incredibly thin 6” mirror with less than a 1/8” edge. Making this mirror to such perfection is a real feat! We also had a chance to visit the telescope museum at Hartness House, have dinner together where we talked about telescope making and had a nice sing-along one night once the clouds came in. Larry helped me a lot preparing for my demo so thank you Larry!

A couple of star party firsts were achieved at Stellafane 2019. Alan may have been the first person to provide vacuum coatings onsite and outdoors at a star party. This young lady (Nicole Deshone) made her own mirror and I believe she was the first person to apply a vacuum coating on her mirror at a star party. I believe that I was also the first person to demonstrate a spray silvering process at a star party as a live event. It was great fun, we made some new friends and we especially enjoyed showing people what can be done if one stretches the imagination a bit. Alan and I had a lot of really good feedback which we both truly appreciated.

I feel the tremendous contributions from Alan, George and myself helped to make Stellafane 2019 a little more special.

Here are a few photos of items I thought were interesting to note:

• Alan Ward’s 4” f/7 hand-made oil spaced and refractor with a built in field corrector. The mechanics of the scope are 3D printed and the scope provides an incredible 4 degrees true field of view.
  
• Alvan Clark’s original Testing Stool was interesting to me.
  
• Clark MacDonald’s cool Alt/Az observing chair. I sure hope he brings it to Starfest so I can give it a go!!
  
• Porter’s Garden Scope
  
• Beautifully made GOTO Dob with a really cool Star Trek Theme. Looking through the view finder one sees a table like an iPad to set the destination.

Here a link to all of my photos of Stellafane 2019.