60mm Refractor

About a year ago, someone on sci.astro.amateur mentioned that they had a couple of old 60 mm refractors in the closet. At the time, I was looking to buy one used and had been scanning garage sales and for sale ads without any luck. So I half-in-jest asked if you wanted to donate one. He sent me a private email and offered to send it for the only cost of shipping! Shipping was only $5, but I sent him a $20 check since I would have happily paid that for one at a garage sale.

The picture to the right is one of me with Matthew (age 3 years and 3 months) and Jonathan (age 11 months) “setting up” the telescope for a photography session of the 2001 Leonid meteor shower. You can see the telescope, the CG5 mount and a homemade box that functions as mounting “rings.” The box design was used to give me a place to attach the ball heads I use for holding the cameras.

While functional, the box was heavy. I subsequently replaced the box with a more light-weight structure that also hold the cameras to either side of the telescope instead of mounting both on top. This improves the balance of the mount by keeping the weight closer to the equatorial head’s axis. Here is a picture taken in June 2002 of the modified bracket just before being replaced with my Orion 127 mm Mak-Cas.

Subsequent to that “replacement” I returned the 60 mm Tasco to service as a guide scope and added two more ball mounts on either side of the finder, which I moved to attach to the OTA, so I can now shoot four cameras at once.

If you look closely, you’ll notice the finder has a piece of transparent tape holding the eyepiece on. This finder is the original 5×30 finder from my Orion XT8 and the threads were damaged when I foolishly packed the scope into its carrying case with the finder still atached. The scope is held on the wooden base by a couple of webbing straps which are pulled very tight. This arrangement is not entirely satisfactory as the straps do loosen over time. Still, it works for now.