[Aavso-photometry] Rope Light Illumination for Flats

[Donn Starkey]

I purchased a 110 volt, 6 foot incandescent rope light from Home Depot in the
Lighting Department.  The rope is clear vinyl and the bulbs are clear.  The
dimmer is just a standard commercial wall dimmer.  I have put a dial numbered
0 thru 14 on the dimmer so that I can roughly reproduce the settings as
needed...although I intend to put an AC digital voltmeter on the output of the
dimmer in the future since I have noticed that the dimmer setting do not
reproduce well from night to night.  The rope light is actually placed into an
octagonal ring of PVC pipe that I have glued together.  Before gluing, each
piece of pipe and each 45 degree fitting was cut in the sagital section.  The
minor internal diameter of the octagon is the same as the ID of the front ring
of the scope.

See image: http://starkey.ws/FTP%20Page/Picture%20035.jpg

The image is the scope from the front and below.  The Rope Light/PVC Tubing is
wire-wrapped onto the front ring of the RC-16 and the light reflects off of an
18" x 24" piece of paneling about 2 feet away.  The panel is coated with two
coats of a suspension of blanc fixe in a clear waterbase urethane carrier that
I manufacture myself.

See ISO 3262-3:1998 Part 3: Blanc fixe pigments
Similar to:  http://www.lumetron.com/pdf/p-sp80.pdf

This gives the panel a very flat reflectivity curve in the visible spectrum
and well into the IR.  I need to put some black tape over some of the rope
light were the ends overlap since it is producing extra illumination in that
area.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

I suppose that I will see these for sale in the next issue of Orion's catalog.
;-)

Donn

==============================================
The price of freedom is constant vigilance.
Donn Starkey
starkey73 at mchsi.com
http://www.starkey.ws
AAVSO Observer SDB  -  CBA Indiana
VSNET Observing Team  -  MPC Code H63
==============================================
~