Posts Made By: Alan French

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7327393.stm

"Don't Believe Everything You Think (The 6 Basic Mistakes We Make in Thinking)," by Thomas Kida.

One example...
We seek to confirm, not to question, our ideas.

Clear skies, Alan

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7349236.stm

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1725975,00.html

The web site has been updated.

See http://www.mag1instruments.com/

I am glad this very user friendly and fun telescope will be available again.

Clear skies, Alan

I just read that the giant squid was found to have an eye almost 11 inches across, with a lens the size of an orange. All designed to work in the darkness of the deep ocean.

As an additional bonus, IIRC, the squid's evolutionary path resulted in an eye with the capillaries and connections on the back of the retina. Unlike the human eye, there isn't a lot of junk to cast shadows onto the retina.

Perhaps we can get some volunteers to be retrofitted. 8O

Big eye astronomy. And tell Uncle Al we'll need some really, really big eyepieces.

Clear skies, Alan

Perhaps this might better have been titled "The Questar Effect."

There is a school of thought that small instruments provide advantage over larger apertures when the seeing is poor. I live in upstate New York, where we are certainly not blessed by fine seeing. Since two of us enjoy amateur astronomy, we often have more than one telescope out, especially if a planet is well placed for viewing. I've had frequent chances to compare views of the planets through fine instruments of 90mm to 10" aperture, with a 14.5" in the mix at times.

I have yet to see a night where the smaller aperture revealed more planetary detail. There were always moments to minutes when the larger showed more detail than the smaller.

Over a few nights when Saturn and Jupiter were well placed, I did some experiments with my wife's 14.5" f/6 equatorial. I used it at full aperture, and with a 6.5" off-axis mask. After the trial, the mask went in the trash. I am sure that the 14.5" was seeing limited, but the color rendition and larger exit pupil (same power) were very much appreciated, and detail was often visible that I couldn't seen with the mask.

Anyway, I wouldn't consider seeing as an "excuse" for something smaller than eight to ten inches for planetary viewing. If I lived down in the Florida Keys, I'd consider eight to ten inches insufficient.

Clear skies, Alan

One night, several years ago, we packed up my wife's 14.5" f/6 equatorial for a journey to the club's dark sky site. I packed my little 3.5" f/5 apochromat too.

We arrived before dark, and even the 14.5" doesn't take long to set up, so it was not completely dark when I was done. Since it was bit too early for deep sky observing, I pointed both scopes at Jupiter, which was well placed and fairly high in the sky. The seeing was absolutely horrid - about as bad as I can ever recall. Both the 3.5" and the 14.5" only revealed the NEB and SEB, both devoid of detail.

As I was looking through the 14.5", exclaiming to Sue how awful the seeing was, suddenly, for a brief moment, there was Jupiter in stunning, Voyager like detail. It was amazing. This kept happening - fairly long periods with a most pathetic Jupiter, interspersed with fleeting glimpses of tremendous detail. These brief moments were not nearly as impressive in the smaller scope, which, of course, was not surprise.

Clear skies, Alan

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7417123.stm

Anyone know what name this spider goes by? I am in upstate NY, and a quarter would have about covered the main body.

Thanks!

Clear skies, Alan