---

The club was contacted (via Craig Combes) a few months ago via e-mail by a gentleman named Mike Duncan from Oahu who happened upon our website. He was looking for a new home for a Celestron C-8 telescope that he had inherited. He told Craig the scope had fallen and sustained some damage. Craig told him if he would ship it to us for free, we would take it. Craig received the scope a few days later and assessed the damage. The finder bracket was broken, it's missing the power cord (so we need replacements, if anyone in the club happens to have either) and the visual adapter was bent. There was some minor corrosion in some places and the primary could use a new coating, but other than that it's in fine shape.

OOPS! Craig goofed by removing the primary without realizing that there was no way to collimate it. This left him with a dilemma that he resolved by adding collimation screws for the primary! He also fixed the bent visual adapter, which will soon be replaced by a diagonal, added flocking paper to the inside of the tube, cleaned it up and gave it a nice new paint job.

Craig Nance is looking into having the mirrors re-coated at Keck, and then it should be better than new! Craig has managed to negotiate a good deal on a used tripod and wedge, which will allow us to actually set it up and view through it. So now the club will have a very decent scope for members to use.

---

The club telescope will be available for use by club members as soon as we introduce it, work out some procedures for storage, checkout, & return, and get the remaining parts to make it minimally viable (tripod/wedge). We hope to make this as painless as possible for everyone. Doug, Craig & Craig will have this telescope out (hopefully if the weather holds) for a quick star-test at the Waimea Middle school event, and will bring it to the next club meeting in February.

We'd like to make a special note to thank Craig Combes for taking this scope under his wing and working on it to get it ready for general use....this was no small effort to bring this telescope back to life. There's still some work to do (electronics are still a work in progress), but hopefully, we'll have a generally available 8" telescope for any club member to checkout/use in the next month or two.

Thanks Craig!