I've never been completely satisfied with the spider design on the telescope, so I decided to read up on the various spider designs and what folks had to say about them. One design really caught my attention because implementing it would be so easy and it has an appealing simplicity - Gary Seronik's curved spider using a stainless steel ruler. The beauty of using the stainless ruler is that it is quite thin, is springy so it retains a consistent arc, and also has tension due to the springiness. Gary's design has a sharper bend and smaller arc than I eventually ended up with. When I first mounted the spider exactly as Gary did, I found out that it had quite a bit of vibration.

I was never able to eliminate the spider vibration when I move or bump the scope, I tried different configurations until I felt that I had it minimized. Now I just need a weekend when it is not raining or cloudy to test it out.

I also replaced my Kineoptics HC focuser with a JMI Crayford. Call me a luddite, but I prefer the two crank knobs to twisting the entire focuser.

Images can be found in this Telescope v.2 Modifications photo set on Flickr.

The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search For Alien Intelligence by Paul Davies Davies is chairman of SETI's (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) post-detection task group - responsible for defining the protocol for reporting and managing the World's reaction and response to a confirmed alien detection or communication - and has been involved with SETI for many years. One might reasonably expect someone so involved to be something of an evangelist, but Davies is quite objective and realistic. The book briefly covers the history of SETI and how changes in technology have changed the way we scan for potential neighbors.

But after 50 years of searching with no tangible results, he questions whether we are looking for the right thing and looking for it in the right way. Davies posits that it will take a broader imagination, making an effort to not anthropomorphize our speculation of aliens' potential form, environment or motivations. He advocates looking for other "footprints" of alien intelligence, from indicators of solar system or galaxy wide resource consumption to evidence of probes in our solar system, including "nano" probes and even messages encoded in our DNA by engineered viruses. Davies spends some time discussing the assumption that life is imperative, or even common, suggesting that a better understanding of how easy it is for life to develop could be key to SETI strategy.

Four Ways To Forgivess by Ursula K. Le Guin This book features four short stories that occur on the worlds of Yeowe and Werel (and partly on Hain, the mother world of all sentient races) which trace events in the lives of a handful of characters, some overlapping, as each searches for freedom. Le Guin explores aspects and relative meanings of freedom and liberty and reminds us that we don't live in a world of "this or that", "black and white", nor of one-size-fits-all Democracy.

A Fisherman Of The Inland Sea Unlocking The Air by Ursula K. Le Guin Le Guin is one of my favorite Sci-FI/Fantasy authors, most famous for her Earthsea books. But I particularly enjoy her short stories, which might take place on known or unknown worlds, fantastic or familiar lands, or on our own Earth. No matter the setting her stories are always a vehicle for deeper thoughts about society, justice, faith, culture.

The weather looked promising for observing, after a few months of rain and cloud on 'new Moon' Saturdays. But the skies turned hazy after it got good dark. We also had a change of venue - the observing field was occupied by horses, so we set up down the road on the horses' home field. There was a good open view of the sky, but it seems the light from Calhoun and Adairsville was also stronger. The haze didn't help with the light pollution, either.

I was able to positively locate two globular clusters that were on my list. But the bulk of objects I wanted to track down were galaxies in and around the constellation Coma Berenices. The conditions were just too unsuitable to this pursuit. There were a number of guests in the field so I spent most of my time finding old favorites at the zenith for them to view and describing how the scope works and the process of building it. That was, actually, as rewarding as tracking down those galaxies would have been.

10" f4.7 Reflector | 20mm eyepiece (60x) | 9mm eyepiece (133x)

• NGC 5272 / M3 (GC Club) : Clear but small with the 20mm eyepiece. Ramping up to the 9mm gives me a well resolved and dense cluster of stars. This one is a class V or VI.


• NGC 5024 / M53 (GC Club) : Again, small but easy to spot with the 20mm eyepiece. With the 9mm it is large and bright, but there is no real clear resolution of individual stars. I put it at a concentration class V.

The Day We Found The Universe by Marcia Bartusiak This book centers around one great discovery - that our galaxy does not comprise the entire universe and that the universe is expanding - and tells the story of the people and events that led to the discovery and it's verification. For it was not a single discovery, but the culmination of many discoveries, the work of many astronomers who were often at odds with one another. You only really hear a few of the names - Hubble and Lowell chief among them. In this book you'll also be introduced to Shapley, Leavitt, Humason, Slipher, Lemaître and many others.

A Dream Of Armageddon: The Complete Supernatural Tales by H.G. Wells This is another of my Barnes & Noble sale table finds and one that does not disappoint. A collection of short stories by one of the fathers of Science Fiction, some of them familiar and some of them quite new to me, that ranges in genre from science fiction, fantasy, horror and psychological thriller. Wells' novels are among my favorites and through this book I've decided that he's even more brilliant with the short story. Most of the stories are written in the 'documentary' or 'letter' style that was popular at the time, and Wells uses that style to demonstrate an excellent wit and skill at turning a phrase.