Telescope Toy Story

You know the story. Andy’s sixth birthday brings him Buzz Lightyear, displacing Sheriff Woody. The other toys share Woody's grief until (as always) they confront and surmount the challenges. And they lived happily ever after. 

Right now, 14:23 hours 05-July-2026, we are in the trope’s “save the cat” pages of the script. 

[Earlier versions of this narrative were posted to Cloudy Nights discussion “New 70mm Maksutov from Spectrum Optical Instruments” started by Jim Riffle on December 3, 2022 in the Cats & Casses Forum. My comments there are #321, #323, and #335.] 

Back left: white: Explore Scientific 102-mm doublet refractor
Front left Astronomers Without Borders 130-mm Newtonian 
At right: Spectrum Optics Tour Star Pro Maksutov-Cassegrain.

The Newt Rebellion

June 27: For the past couple of weeks, I have been getting out more with my “tabletop Dobsonian” from Astronomers Without Borders. It is a Newtonian reflector 5 inches (130 mm) in diameter and it comes without a tripod but it does have a Vixen mount for universal compatibility and I put it on a ES First Light Pan-Tilt Mount.

The AWB dob needed collimation (aligning the primary and secondary mirrors) but it was not too far off and it pretty much stayed that way night after night. The time before last, I tweaked it again and made it dead-on to within a gnat's whisker. The next afternoon (June 28), the Spectrum Optics Maksutov Cassegrain telescope arrived from Astronomics and I set it up. 

Left: AWB 130 on ES First Light Mount.
Right: Meade StarPro 70 mm.
They got along fine.  

Set-up was easy. I intended to take out the AWB reflector to compare the views. When I looked in the collimation eyepiece, the view was horrific: the entire primary mirror was two-thirds off center, ten times more wrong than it ever had been. I adjusted the three primary screws at the back. That was ineffective. I adjusted the three secondary hex bolts up front. The changes were not the ones I sought. I loosened the main mount of the secondary mirror mount. It only got worse. I took the AWB 5-inch reflector and two cases of small tools into the house. 

Unexplained Sightings 

June 29. After the unusual failure of the 130-mm Newtonian from Astronomers Without Borders, I took out the Explore Scientific 102-mm doublet refractor. To other stargazers, I identify this as “my grab-and-go.” On its mount, with accessories, the package is 20 lbs (9 kg) and it always works. Tonight, the red-dot LED finder scope would not come on. 

Click. Click-click...pause...wait... do it again... 

Easy enough, I got another battery. Nothing. Click. Click-click...pause...wait... do it again… Batteries fresh from the pack seldom fail, therefore the LED on the finder must be dead. (Later, I checked the battery and it still had high potential at 3 volts.)

Next, I chose a Celestron 51630 Star Pointer from inventory. With dabs of white-out, I match-marked the On-Off and Up-Down and went out and ran errands. A couple of hours later, I went to the telescope to check the alignment on the red dot finder and the On-Off switch was broken: it clicked Off but rotated fully through On without clicking On. and there was no red dot.

Explore Scientific 102-mm refractor.
Note at right on the eyepiece mount 
is a Stellarvue Correcting Prism with fine focus.
(I think that taking this off the ES-102 and putting it
on the Mak-70 was a point of contention among the scopes.)

Portland Cement on a Horta

July 3. I filled out a request slip and gave my tool check to the guy at the crib for an AstroTech Multiple Reticle finder the same as I use on my AstroTech 115 mm  Extremely-low Dispersion Triplet refractor. Then I found a new base to fit both the ES 102 telescope and the new finder. I settled on the closest match and superglued the plastic bases to each other. 

Homepage ad from Spectrum Optics
At $159 it was very competitive in its class.
Astronomics had these for $100. 
So, I bought five for four friends and myself. 

Right now, the mount for the finder is narrower than the draw of the clamp attaching it to the stand. So, now, I am looking for shims. Passing up scrap aluminum and plastic, I tried folding and rolling paper, then turned to plastic soda straws before cutting to lengths a cardboard stylus for cellphones. To hold the shims, I used SuperGlue gel. It is not a permanent repair but it will work until I get new finders from Explore Scientific. Now, I can use the grab-n-go for all of the deep space objects in my southern skies from 10:00 PM to 2:00 AM and continue to test the Maksutov against the near competitors in my shed.

[Sunday. July 11. 23:30. Like the Official Dog in Eric Frank Russell's "Alamagoosa," the patch failed under gravititic stress. The telescope is back in the shed under wraps "until I get new finders from Explore Scientific."]

[Tuesday. July 14. 16:03. I bought three replacements from Explore Scientific. (I have another 102-mm refractor like this one but longer.) The trees that they are on do not fit the slot in the telescope. I got out the shoebox with new and used finder bases and found a close match. After sighting and aligning on a nearby chimney, when I go out again, I will have to remember that "center" is down and to the left of the red dot.]

 

The salient problem remains: Why all the failures? 

Notes: 

Astronomers Without Borders branded their entry-level hobbyist instrument in the name of John Dobson, a problematic Vedanta Hinduist who sought to unify religion and science by building large telescopes from scrap parts and taking them to the streets of San Francisco to show people the skies they did not know.  

A Sidewalk Astronomer, documentary film by Jeff Jacobs: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= bVbX19kabNc

Tribute by the Planetary Society

https://www.planetary.org/profiles/john-dobson

Wikipedia of course

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dobson_(amateur_astronomer)

Dmitry Dmitrievich Maksutov was serving in the USSR military when he invented this design. Like the Cassegrain and Schmidt, the Maksutov design benefits from a folded optical path, allowing twice the focal length or half the tube size. Moreover, the "negative miniscus" of the secondary optics corrects for spherical aberration. However, the Maksutov design allows aberrations when the diameters of the component mirrors exceed 100 mm (4 inches). So, these tend to be small and lightweight, which is perfect for hobbyists. Moreover, the telescope is sealed: there is nothing for you to adjust. 

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Cleveland, Ohio, and the Gates of Argonath

"Two pairs of entrance pylons on both the west and east ends of the Hope Memorial Bridge (formerly the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge) have figural reliefs symbolizing the development of road transportation. These stylized 43-foot high pylons, carved of Berea sandstone, are well-preserved examples of Art Deco figures, all holding examples of road transportation." --
https://www.bluffton.edu/homepages/facstaff/sullivanm/ohio/cleveland/bridgepylons/hering.html

The Argonath, also known as the Gate of Kings or the Pillars of the Kings, was a landmark on the northern edge of Gondor. The Argonath consisted of two enormous rock pillars, carved in the likenesses of Isildur and Anárion facing to the north. Placed upon huge pedestals, each of the two figures held an axe in its right hand and its left hand rose in a gesture of defiance to the enemies of Gondor. The two statues stood upon either side of the River Anduin at the northern approach to Nen Hithoel. -- http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Argonath

"The Argonath ... marked the northern border of Gondor, as nearby down south were previous outposts, Amon Hen and the Amon Lhaw.
The Argonath was originally constructed about TA 1340 at the order of Rómendacil II to mark the northern border of Gondor, although the realm was greatly diminished in size by the time the Fellowship of the Ring passed the monument on February 25, 3019."  -- http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Argonath

"Perhaps the most memorable features of the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge are the 43-foot tall “Guardians of Transportation” which line its sides. These four huge double-sided pylons, carved out of sandstone from nearby Berea, Ohio, represent technological advances made in transit, with each Guardian holding a different kind of vehicle in its massive hands. Frank Walker designed the pylons and Henry Hering did the actual sculpting with the help of a number of local stonecutters."
-- https://clevelandhistorical.org/items/show/73

"In the 1970s, Cuyahoga County Engineer Albert Porter wanted to tear down the pylons in order to add lanes to the bridge. He did not get his way. So, when the bridge reopened in 1983 after nearly three years of repairs, the Guardians of Transportation were still in place. The bridge was renamed at this time, becoming the Hope Memorial Bridge, in honor of actor Bob Hope and his family - English immigrants who came to Cleveland in 1908. William Henry Hope, Bob’s father, was a stonemason who worked on the construction of the Guardians in the 1930s."
-- https://clevelandhistorical.org/items/show/73

"Henry Hering is well known for his work as an architectural sculptor. Much of his work consists of allegorical figures done in the Beaux-Arts tradition, although a few of his later works, such as the detailing in Severance Hall and the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge in Cleveland, Ohio, were done in the Art Deco style. Hering's reputation as a sculptor decreased as International Modernism dispensed with architectural, figurative and allegorical work. As with many other such artists Hering's oeuvre is now being reexamined in a more positive light. In 1928 he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member and became a full Academician in 1937."
 -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Hering

"Hering is further remembered in relation to the unfortunate crash of an American B-25 military airplane into New York City's Empire State Building on July 28, 1945. The largest sections of the plane remained lodged in the building, or fell directly to the streets below. However, one engine ripped from its wing and traveled some distance away, regrettably landing in Hering's top floor penthouse studio, located in a building near the crash. At the time, newspaper coverage of the accident reported that, although the artist was not in his studio at the time, about $75,000 worth of his work was destroyed." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Hering

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The Wizard of Oz and the Anti-Intellectual Tradition

“Every pusillanimous creature that crawls on the Earth or slinks through the slimy seas has a brain. Back where I come from we have universities, seats of great learning where men go to become great thinkers. They think deep thoughts with no more brains than you have.”

L. Frank Baum was a serial entrepreneur, a newspaper publisher, a playwright, and theater producer. With The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Baum intended to create for his children and their friends an American fairy tale. That claim is supported by two biographies, The Wizard of Oz and Who He Was by Martin Gardner and Russell B. Nye, and To Please a Child by Frank Joslyn Baum and Russell P. MacFall. The Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen are archaic and often gruesome. Baum’s story is filled with the stuff of 19^thcentury America: hot air balloons, colored glasses, and intricate mechanisms. The heroes do not take vengeance on the vanquished. In the next Oz book, women rule the kingdom. A trope used by Aristophanes, it surely reflected the drive for women’s suffrage in Baum’s day. But for all of his cleverness, insight, and intelligence, Baum was not an intellectual. And, to the point here, the successful 1939 cinematic presentation of his story speaks from and to the anti-intellectual tradition.

In the book, rather than a grand ceremony, each of the heroes receives their reward privately. The Wizard removes the Scarecrow’s head and stuffs it with bran, pins, and needles. 

“Hereafter you will be a great man, for I have given you a lot of bran-new brains.” The Scarecrow was both pleased and proud at the fulfillment of his greatest wish, and having thanked Oz warmly, he went back to his friends.

Dorothy looked at him curiously. His head was quite bulged out at the top with brains.

“How do you feel,” she asked.

“I feel wise indeed,” he answered earnestly. “When I get used to my brains, I shall know everything.”

“Why are those needles and pins sticking out of your head?” asked the Tin Woodman.

“That is proof that he is sharp,” remarked the Lion.

In the movie, the Scarecrow is handed a diploma for his Th. D. degree and he says, “The sum of the square roots of two sides of an isosceles triangle is equal to the square root of the remaining side.” That, of course, is nonsense. But that does not matter. It sounds complicated and it came from a Scarecrow who did not even get fresh bran stuffing. The men at the university (there being no women at university in the common view) have no more brains than the Scarecrow. They only have impressive degrees that empower them to recite silliness. 

Numismatists and economists have probably underscored the real meaning of the Scarecrow's brains by reading in allegories about William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” speech. Baum clearly took many elements from American culture. He was an active politico, speaking to both Democrat and Republican rallies. The truth may be that as myth, The Wizard of Oz allows us to read our own meanings into its symbols. Whether he intended to lean on the Crime of '73 as he did the use of ipecac and sunglasses is an open question. 

My article on the economic allegory within The Wizard of Oz can be found on the ANA Website Blogs here. That presentation was taken from my article in the Central States Numismatic Society Centinel. I previewed that with a letter to the Numismatic Bibliomania Society E-Sylum here. That was from 2009. But the trend continues, demonstrated by this 2016 report about the opinions of retired economics professor David Denslow in the Gainesville Sun. 

  

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SUPERMAN: AMERICAN ALIEN

Canon exists. Once you stray from canon, you go from a slippery slope to a reductio ad absurdum in which all you have is an empty name. A Vegetarian Big Mac has no meat.  Alternately - and it is all about alternates - once a new poet recasts a myth, broad reception and acceptance can solidify that new interpretation into a classic. 

In the earliest saga of Sifrit, Brynhilda was a Valkyrie. In the Middle Ages, she was the Queen of Iceland; Hagan and his gang were Burgundians; and the curse of the Nibelungs was effected by Attila the Hun. Richard Wagner reanimated the older epic and made it the new canon. Clash of the Titans is no less canon than the re-imaged work of Apollonius of Rhodes who about 250 BCE borrowed from several ancient legends to build his Argonautica. 

The core of the Arthurian legends was a handful of separate stories. From them, Chretian of Troyes constructed a new epic for the court of Marie of Champagne, the half sister of Richard Lionheart. Four hundred years later, Sir Thomas Mallory reshaped the story for his own time - though we hardly know the difference between the two periods, both being only "medieval." In the 19th century, the romantic revolution provided the context for Alfred Lord Tennyson's Idylls of the King. Two generations later, they were presented as T. H. White's Once and Future King; and in another 20 years, the Broadway musical Camelot by Lerner, Loewe, and Hart came to stand for the Kennedy Administration.

How many times has Superman has been re-imaged? How many timelines and alternate universes exist? Even Bizarro Superman has re-instantiations.  And if Superman is variously vulnerable to the many forms of kryptonite, why is he never affected by his own costume, the space ship that brought him here, or Supergirl? (Riddle me that, Batman.)

In this version by Max Landis, Nick Dragotta, John Workman, and their collaborators, we meet a Superboy with whom Smallville is more or less adapted. Clark Kent's super powers still surprise him. Clark Kent's challenge after moving to Metropolis is to discover the range and limits of his abilities, and how to best use them--for his own good, and perhaps for a greater good. That greater good is also a challenge, though this version has no soul searching.

Superman and Clark Kent meet Batman and Bruce Wayne.  We have the wider field of vision, of course, perhaps even an x-ray vision by which we see their inner processes as they meet. But, again, Max Landis has written without the deep philosophizing of self reflection. As Montag said in Fahrenheit 451, inside each book is a man.

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