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nykaver
member
Reged: 11/07/07
Posts: 66
Loc: Danbury, CT
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Re: Restoration of the earliest? Schaefer telescope
06/11/09 10:23 PM Attachment (18 downloads)
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The owner before me had posted that the mirror was an 8" f/8 and was signed "J. Ballas 1/58 F.L. 63 1/4” At the time no one knew of a J. Ballas. Has this changed? Is there a way to research membership in the astronomy clubs in that area from the late 50's?
My personal hope was that Mr. Ballas was a long forgotten optician who worked for Tom Cave. Alas, that's probably not the case. The mirrors needed recoating and I sent them to Cary at Optic Wave Labs. Cary tested the primary and reported that overall smoothness was good but it had a turned down edge and a Strehl ratio of .858. Cary refigured the mirror at my request and it is now 1/12 wave with a Strehl of .98! The guy is an artist!
So my working hypothesis is that J. Ballas was an amateur who ground his own mirror and commissioned Bill Schaefer to build a telescope around it. I wouldn't think a commercial optics producer would have sold Bill a mirror with a turned edge. What do you think?
The pier and legs are obviously Cave. It appears the tube is as well (or Parks) with a lovely riveted aluminum trim ring on top. See the thread on the 1952 Cave here http://tinyurl.com/kqgonl
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1958 Schaefer 8" f/8
Unitron 4" Mod 150
Zeiss AS63/840
Zeiss Asiola
Orange C8, C11
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