My 13" Dobsonian telescope was constructed from a 13" mirror I made and was inspired by the starmaster EL design. I have four parallel tubes that hold up the secondary cage. I initially constructed it with no diagonal tubes, by the action was very sloppy. Such sloppy action will make a mockery of my careful collimation, so I bagged it and added the braces. In the lower center picture you can see that the poles are mounted on two slates of wood, and that the wood slates are connected to the base by four bolts. The poles are held into the top structure by for more bolts, each, and all of these have plastic handles. The pole assembly comes off as one piece and folds together. The secondary assembly then rests in the top of the mirror box. Overall it is a portable dewing that can be assembled with no tools and it holds it's collimation well. (I will post pictures of the pole assembly when I get a chance.)

The mirror cell is a standard 9-point flotation system with 4-point side support. The focuser is a JMI NGF-DX1, a two-speed model that works very well. I like to be able to focus my telescope, and I find that the normal Crayford focusers have an action that is just too coarse for a fine focus. The two speed focusers are wonderful. The secondary assembly was purchased from Gary Wolanski. He makes excellent spider and secondary assemblies, and I recommend them enthusiastically.

I purchased a used dual-axis equatorial table at the 2000 RTMC. I tried it out Sunday night after returning home and had one of those magic evenings when the seeing just gets better and better. There was no wind and the air was turning misty. I kept cranking up the power as I cruised for double stars. The double-double looked great, and I took it up to 660 X (the maximum available power with my eyepiece/Barlow collection.) You could drive a truck between the close pairs, and the Airy disks were obvious if not completely steady. I also tracked down UMa 78, featured in the Sky and Telescope article in May 2000. It was completely trivial to split, although in the past it had been troublesome with the bright primary swamping out the faint secondary. I also tracked down 48-Virgo, which is listed in Burnham's as a 0.4" double star. It split cleanly with black space between the doubles. The Washington Double-Star Catalog lists it as a 0.6" double (BU929), which is consistent with the way it appeared in my telescope. I looked through Burnham's for other interesting doubles and found STF3130 in Lyra. The AB-C split was easy at 2.7", but I could not split the reported 0.4" primary. Looking it up in the WDS catalog I found that the primary has not been split since 1882, and it is doubtful that it really is a double star! Dawes limit for a 13" is about 0.35", but I didn't find any reputable double stars near this separation. The telescope preforms very well, and I can't wait for the planets to come back this summer!