More Telescope Tomfoolery - The Shivers

We have learned that aluminum tripods shiver a lot. Particularly when you set them up on the concrete out in the driveway. But now, with the ground hard as a rock, a result of the fact that it never rains in these parts anymore ever, the telescope shivers have migrated to the grass habitat areas. The shivers, you see, make it really hard to discern, distinctly, celestial bodies constrained within the FOV of the telescopery.

The photograph to the immediate east of this text indicates part of the problem. See how tiny the telescope foot is. We figure it needs a big rubber shoe to keep it from shivering. So yesterday we determined to take some action. Having several Druids here who are both men and ladies of action can come in handy, and we, lo and behold, decided to address the subtopic, telescope shivers, thoroughgoingly.

The first thing we did, of course, was go to the internet. And at the internet we soon found several vendors with footgear for telescopes that allegedly helps out with the shivers. But all these vendors charged in the neighborhood of fifty dollars for a set of three of their rubber shoes. Our tripods all have three legs so that's how many we would need, three, or six if each tripod gets shoes. But at fifty dollars a triplet, we decided those tripods would just have to share a pair. See! All you humans are lucky you are not tripods, because shoe cost would go up at least 33%, for you, if you were a tripod.

So we kept on interneting and soon found that a comrade Astromarter had already addressed this subtopic. His solution to the overweening cost of telescope shoes was to make his own. So naturally we wanted to do that too, make our own. Loosely following the instructions provided by our comrade Astromarter we dispatched Crumby and Lomo to Home Depot to purchase two tubes of silicon rubber bathroom caulk, which is allegedly pure rubber. Believe it or not, those two knuckleheads, Lomo and Crumby, came back with one white silicon tube and one clear one. You would think they could at least get the same color tubes. But we were all fired up to get started when we discovered the color blunder, and I, Rayetta, had already cut the bottoms out of three surplus official RGVECB canteens to serve as molds, so away we went, anyway, despite the potential contrasting colors of our presumptive rubber telescope shoes.

I, Rayetta also, preparatory to squirting the silicon rubber gel into the plastic Old Crow bottle molds, I mean canteeen molds, greased those molds up good with some canola oil. Maybe the rubber shoes won't stick to the molds on account of that precaution, maybe.

We don't know how long it will take those stinky presumptive rubber shoe items to cure. Right now they are on the side porch airing out. Believe me! They need to air out, for sure, for they are veritably quite stinky. Anon, we shall discover if they actually turn into a rubbery, more or less solid disc about 3/4" thick and with an indentation on one of the sides to house a tiny telescope foot, and then also if they are fixing to work on the telescopes to address the shivers.

Hmmm. That silicon stuff costs almost four bucks a tube and we only got three presumptive shoes out of the two tubes.

Oh yes. Lomo got the little electric gizmo working last night and we all had some nice leisurely looks at the Orion nebula. So Red is a happy camper.