Astronomers
of
Verde Valley
            
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Many of our
club member scopes are hand crafted by the owners. This produces
a telescope of high quality and better optics that can be found
in "commercial" telescopes. |
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Richard Bohner shows off his Celestron
152mm refractor. |
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Club member Greg
Neaveill, after admiring the Laura Scope at one of our star
parties, decided to build his own. Living out of town, he
consulted with Doug O on the process of construction by email
and phone. Here's a picture of his 10" reflector. Click on the
picture for a full view. |
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Karen, the First
Lady of the Club, looks through her 6 inch reflector made by the
late optician Pierre Schwar. J D's 11 incher is in the
background. |
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Fred (standing)
has a serious discussion with Milt (seated) on the resolution of
his 14 inch telescope. |
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The Club President
JD with his 11 inch Celestron GPS computerized Goto telescope. |
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Milt with his huge
TEC refractor. |
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Jim's waiting for
darkness with his hand crafted scope, "Scrappy". This is a 10
inch reflector he built from spare parts for less than $50. |
At our Two
Trees Observing site, everyone is waiting patiently for
darkness as the Messier Marathon is ready to start.
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Jim again with
his "Hale-Bopp" telescope. Jim hand crafted this 17 inch
telescope and it discovered the now famous Hale-Bopp Comet.
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Milt with his
galaxy hunting Vixen, 10 inch reflector.
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This is the
"Laura" scope, hand crafted by Doug (standing). He
originally built the scope for Laura Stoiber who
unfortunately passed away not long after the scope was
finished. Her family donated the scope to the club as per
Laura's wishes.
Doug puts the
finishing touches on Laura's scope as it is about to see
first light at Two Trees.
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| Milt
Wilcox receives acknowledgement for cataloguing his 2,500th
observed object at the 2010 Messier Marathon at the Clubs Two
Trees Observing Location. (Webmasters Note: 7
days after the Messier Marathon, Milt passed away due to
complications from treatment of Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia
(CLL). Please go to
http://www.clltopics.org to learn more about this
disease.)
"May he look down upon us and
smile as we look towards the heavens and universe above"
Milton Wilcox 1946-2010 |
Milt looks on
at the completion of the scope project and awaits first
light. Laura is getting impatient for darkness to occur.
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