_Augustus_

Polishing starts today! I just have to get my hands on a red laser pointer and heat up the pitch. Might make a video.

This exactly. It doesn't help that pretty much anything that the devs want to put in paid DLC could be made by a modder for free, because then they might think about restricting mods.....

A friend of mine might be sending me his Orion StarShoot 2, which should, if nothing else, improve upon the QuickCam...

Thanks! It should be completely finished by August or so... then I'll begin the next one......

Congrats India! Agreed.

I was thinking about imaging Jupiter but the seeing caused the Moon to shimmer at 75x with my 8" SCT (it had been cooling for 2 hours, so thermals weren't causing it), so I figured imaging would be a pointless endeavor. Ended up viewing a few bright DSOs, saw M92 for the first time.

July 20-23.

Very low, but if we have 10000 sats by that time, who knows?

Started and finished #600 grit today. I'm pretty much done with grinding unless it turns out I'm supposed to use the emery supplied in the kit for something. As Zeiss Ikon was saying, the mirror blank and tool getting stuck together was a real problem at #600. But I suppose that means that the mirror is a good sphere, because otherwise that wouldn't happen. It's likely that I will buy quite a few mirror blanks in various sizes at Stellafane, because everything at the Stellafane swap tables is soooo cheap (Seriously, I would recommend going to Stellafane just for the swap tables).

F9 has more than enough capacity.

If ProtoJeb's planet "i" with the ~32 day period exists, it could be far/big enough to have moons, which could immediately disprove a planetocentric system. That melting planet was probably thrown there by a gravitational interaction.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ IDK about PC modding either but I have the console version of GTA 5. It's unmoddable and has a lot of missing content compared to the PC version to fit size restrictions/etc.

I have ran the whole simulation in SpaceEngine. From TRAPPIST-1d, the planets 1b, 1c, and 1e would all reach a size close to that of our Moon in the sky. Even 1f and 1g would reach sizes of at least 10 arcminutes at the closest, which would be enough to see a tiny bit of detail with the naked eye. 1h and ProtoJeb's 8th planet would be recognizable as non-stellar objects. Thus, I any inhabitants would have a proper understanding of their solar system in even prehistoric times. Interesting.

Causes me to crash before I get to the main menu.....

Jupiter two days ago: http://www.astrobin.com/298433/

Explain to me how Ariane 4 is Kerbal?

Started and finished #400 grit today. There's some confusion on what the focal length is. Today it measured at ~45". Should be cleared up with Foucault testing. EDIT 7/27/17: Yep, it was cleared up with Foucault testing. The FL is actually 47-48". Thanks for pinning my thread!

The tool was beveled and seems to have generated a small bevel on the edge. Not concerned.

I think that Sunkar will fly. It's basically a modernized Zenit, and it's small/cheap enough to fly commercial payloads and Federatsiya.

I figured out flats! Yay! http://www.astrobin.com/298082/ Composite of 40 images taken with my Meade 2080 and Quickcam.

Theophilus, Cyrillus, and Catharina. Also, here's a shot of the Moon's south pole: http://www.astrobin.com/297955/?nc=user

Finished with the #320 grit today. Tomorrow I will move on to the #400.

Meade 2080, Quickcam, 1.5x Barlow.

HA HA HA http://www.astrobin.com/297955/

Actually, Newton and Herschel made their mirrors out of metal that had very low reflectivity, was difficult to figure, and tarnished quickly - aluminizing machines and even chemical silvering hadn't been invented yet. Newton himself never even made a parabolic mirror - he just made a tiny one with a spherical mirror that was close enough to a parabola at that size.