Paul Haese plans to use his 18” f4.5 for planetary imaging with a DMK set-up and true tech filter wheel. Paul is already up there with the best, but really wants to strive for better images whilst imaging around 9000-11000mm in focal length; maybe even be the best.

Paul submits images to Dr John Rogers in England and Hans-Joerg Mettig in Germany who both do reports of cloud formation and activity on Jupiter. There are about 30 imagers involved around the globe, each doing great work despite local conditions.

Along with colleague Anthony Wesley, Paul is planning to develop a cooling cover by installing five Peltier coolers on a custom built aluminium front plate with corresponding fans on the inner face which will in effect create a refrigerator in the rocker box. This way, the Peltiers can be run on the way to a site or even at home before taking the scope outside and setting up. This will assist in helping the mirror reach ambient temperature and thereby prevent wave fronts from ruining imaging in good seeing conditions.

Paul enthused: “I am truly excited about the arrival of my new scope and glad that I can help keep some of the money within Australia. Supporting an Australian manufacturer just places icing on the cake. So much of astronomy related products are made in another country. Besides that Peter really cares about his product and pleasing his customer. A rare breed in this day.”

Peter delivered SDM#008 to Terry Dougherty of Victoria personally on Sunday afternoon and set up the scope together with its proud new owner. As Terry says: “The ‘new scope gods’ must have been taking a nap as that night was clear although the seeing conditions were not optimal, only suitable for medium magnification work. It was a treat and initially somewhat scary to see something so big slewing to object after object. We observed till about midnight and finished up with a nice view of Uranus. After packing up we retired to our living room where Peter with his violin and my wife Janie with her piano put on a duet. Peter showed his teaching skills by teaching me how to play the violin. I mastered, in a fashion, to be able to play “Mary had a little lamb”. We all then finally retired after a great night of stars and music. The next day Peter was up early and spent more time on adjusting the scope to his exacting requirements before heading off after lunch. The scope is fantastic and to have the designer and builder deliver the scope, set it up and share first light is a very unique experience.”

Just as the telescopes at SDM are continually being improved as new and better materials become available, all other areas come under Peter’s watchful eye too.

In his own words: “If you look at it in the vertical position, it is a stylised Greek letter lambda used in the P-V and RMS measurements of a mirror’s surface. If you look at it in the horizontal position it could be a stylised representation of the evolution of the universe ………then again it could be just a nifty logo!”

Rod Berry, a Sydney-based lawyer, is very excited about an order he has just placed for SDM#012, a 20″ telescope, with f/5 mirror from OMI Torus. Rod says, “SDM scopes are truly works of art. What better instrument to use to observe the cosmic canvas, than with one of Peter Read’s creations?”

Rod started seriously observing some 18 months ago when he purchased his first scope, a 10″ SCT. He never misses New Moon observing opportunities, and will drive long distances to get to the darkest skies possible. He is also well known to his Central Coast neighbours for his peculiar backyard observing habits at all hours of the night.

Visual astronomy is Rod’s thing, and in the last 12 months he has been systematically working through the Messier, Caldwell, Herschel 400 and Bennett catalogues, and also some of other brighter objects in the NGC and IC. He is a compulsive keeper of written observations, which lends itself well to his growing interest in double star observing. Having recently had several opportunities to observe through a large truss Dobsonian telescope, Rod is now yearning for larger aperture to see galaxies, planetary nebulae, and globulars in greater detail, and to help with cleanly splitting closer doubles.

His wife and children are wondering whether Rod will ever come down from his observing ladder after SDM#012 arrives in November 2006. Rod plans to use Argo-Navis to help locate observing objects initially, and in the long-term hopes to have Servo-cat installed to give his scope full GOTO functionality.

SDM telescopes has accepted the kind invitation from Ice-In-Space, the premier Australian on-line community to present at their second Astro Camp in January 2007. Peter will be giving a talk entitled “Building a Large Aperture Dobsonian – some secrets revealed”. A real must for anyone setting out to build their own Dobsonian. More details about this event can be found in the IIS website.