Projects In Metal

Starship Part 4

After my telescope had been completed for some time, and typical of many of my completed projects, I would think of ways to improve upon the original design and make the changes in my shop as required.
Some of the changes that I made to my telescope were necessary to the operation of the telescope.

Others, such as the cosmetic one shown here in the form of a quote from a astronomy book in my library by Robert Burham, maybe not important to the health of my telescope, but definitely gives people the warm fuzzy's when they read this quote on the side of my telescope.

Burnham quoted an anoymous Chinese poet about the Milky Way:

"Look now upon the River of Heaven,
Sky-Road of the Immortals,
White with the star-frost of a billion years ...

I will only forgive you for not knowing what this quote is refering to, if you have never travelled outside of the light polluted skies of a major city. This quote is describing the Milky Way, the spiral galaxy we call home, as do roughly 100 billion other stars.

It looks very much like other spiral galaxies when viewed from above. There are spiral arms and a bright central part. The Sun is far from the center of the Galaxy, halfway to the edge of the Galaxy along the Orion spiral arm. The Sun is revolving around the center of the Galaxy at a speed of half a million miles per hour, yet it will still take 200 million years for it to go around once.

I will post more photos of my telescope showing the lower end of the telescope before to long.