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Florida Fringe Festival III
Telescope Workshop and Star Party

Friday, February 17 - Sunday February 19

Drewville (hanger/runway/field) Florida (25 miles north of Cape Kennedy)

 

(Followed by the Winter Star Party February 20 - 26, 2012 in the Keys)


Contact: Andrew Aurigema
eosraptor@gmail.com

 

Friday Feb 17 will be a play day for making mirrors, cleaning optics, setting up telescopes, loading the vacuum chamber, eating, and getting ready for the StarParty on Saturday. If the weather holds we will set up the scopes and check out the sky Friday night. Bring your mirror and we will test it or work on it if you want to. My shop can accommodate a mirror up to about 60" dia.

Saturday Feb 18 will be all day playing mirror making, testing and demonstrations. We will have mirror stripping, polishing, laser interferometry testing, ronchi and Foucault testing demos as requested. Vacuum coating of aluminum on mirrors and CnC table use as the day allows. Demo of the new 0.65 meter StarStone mirrors and hopefully a look at the meter class mirrors to come. Saturday night 6:00 PM the shop closes and the food is served. Scopes are the order of business till the stars go to sleep.

Sunday Feb 19 is recovery, packing up to head to dinner out and the
Winter Star Party in the Keys.

Accommodations

There are 5 acres of front yard / parking so RV's and tents are welcome. There are no RV facilities. Last year I ran electrical out to a few of our campers (on an extension cord  and that seemed to work well for running lights and laptops. There are hotels in the area if you are coming from out of town and don't want to camp out.
 

 



 

 

 

Florida Fringe Festival 2010

 

All in all the Florida Fringe Festival '10 was a blast (see pictures below of the mirror-making fun). We had about 40 people show for the evening festivities, tons of food, a pick up band ( playing StarWars ), kids from 2 to 82 ( Great Grand Ma Sola was teaching us the constellation names in Spanish....and she knew every one of them too), a bond fire with shmoors and hot cocoa, and 9 scopes on the field. We got to see the new Lockwood  22"  f/3 starlight eating machine a week before it was unveiled at WSP.   2011will be even better.   We got lasers and meter class mirrors to play with :_)))))))))

Left to right  Mike Lockwood, Dave Davis, John Pratt & Andrew Aurigema second row ( in front ).  Russ Jacoy is taking the pic. The gang took a well deserved break having just finished building up the little polishing machine (seen center) at FFF '10.

State of the art in StarStone mirror grinding design. That is "pickles" the friendly grinding machine.  FFF '10 was the kick off for the Starstone mirror factory build and this is the grinding mechanism that became Grinder #001.  And yes, that is a real pickle jar and wet beach sand I am grinding with. That mirror turned out quiet nicely as later pictures show. 

After much grinding and polishing and sipping of cold beer, it was decided that the little polisher had to be pressed into service. So this is our 5 minute wooden pitch lap that was made by Dave D and Andrew A and remade by Mike L several times until we sent him inside to get food. Then we got some polishing done.  

This is the world famous Dave D. and his newly "gorrila glue" bonded thin shell mirror on PPG foamglas. This mirror later in the afternoon went into the kiln for some reason ( that I cant remember ) and promptly had a bad day.  But for a while it was ground on by Dave D with his aluminum ring lap and some beach sand. There was no end of experimental stuff being tried that day in sunny Florida.

John P and Mike L were taking in as much Sunny Florida as possible having just driven down from central Illinois and escaping feet of snow.  Not sure what the thing is getting bonded (most likely something Dave D was working on) but the yellow thing under it is the new Grinder #001 (not yet ready for service).

The gange trying to explain ronchi testing to Andrew A ( not seen ). Left to right is Russ J setting up his ronchi tester, Mike L looking on and not at all sure any of us are sane, Rory Duncan ( late to the day but he brought 3 telescopes and more beer so we let him stay) looking confused, and John P agreeing with Mike L that none of this kludge engineering is going to make ronchi lines ...let alone straight ones.

Well, we did make ronchi lines and they were straight.  That is Dave D trying to show me ( Andrew A) how to use a ronchi tester. The thing in the background is my 0.7 meter RC Robotic homemade research scope.  Once we stopped playing with simulated starlight we dragged all the scopes out and made some real starlight fringes.  

The little StarStone prototype did make straight lines and we polished it more and installed it in a telescope.  Engineering note.... never put four telescope builders in a circle and ask what is the best way to install an experimental mirror into an experimental telescope.  Left to right is Mark Femmininio,  Russ J, Rory D, and Mike L.  As you can see Mike was keeping the mood light. 

This is the rarely seen and never before imaged "Pine Needle Nebula" in the southern constellation of Florida.  What were you expecting from a hyper experimental ( first of its kind ) foam glass mirror that was ground with a pickle jar and beach sand and installed in a borrowed telescope by a group of aerospace engineers.  The fact it made an image at all is amazing. 

 

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