Posts Made By: Lonnie Puterbaugh

I do not currently own a binoviewer and I do not have any intentions to purchase one any time soon. I also do not currently own any Siebert eyepieces. I tend to purchase higher-end eyepieces to go with a Tak-106 and a GT1 mount. I purchased these from Herb instead of somewhere else as a reward for supporting Astromart. I will probably be purchasing a Coronado scope in the near future and it too will come from Anacortes.

I consider the Yahoo groups vital to the growth of amateur astronomy just like I consider Astromart to do the same. I'm just lucky that none of the dozen or so groups that I belong to were wrecked by this person's accusations.

I condemn astro-equipment all the time. I guess I ought to be banned from amateur astronomy for good! I just love to hate my new used Fastar-C11 for instance. I don't know how anyone can really like imaging with a scope with this much mirror shift. I still use it though and I'm going to keep it until I can save money for a Tak Mewlon or RC. I also recently trounced the Meade LXD55 mounts on the equipment forum. I do own some Meade Ultra-wide eyepieces though that I really love. Every company in the low-end of price range does some things wrong. Someone is always going to dislike a product and some products deserve to be disliked by everyone! Mr. Siebert needs to learn this or get out of the business. People need to be able to rate products in this hobby.

From what I've read today, on this and other groups, and from Mr. Siebert himself, it seems pretty clear where the blame lies. I will never own any Siebert anything.

You say OK, no loss. However, some of us have been around since Astromart started long ago. Our club members consider us seniors and I myself am an equipment committee chairman for our fairly large astro-society. I help make purchasing decisions for our entire club and I often give recommendations to new members on equipment including lower-cost items and where to purchase it. I often recommend Anacortes for instance. I will now do my best to see that no one ever purchases anything from Mr. Siebert!

Have a good day HS!

--Lonnie

My vote goes to Bill Clinton! Anyone else would have lost their job for doing even one or two of the many acts this man committed.

Anybody have one of these yet? I have one ordered along with some CEMAX eyepieces and I'm wondering when it will arrive.

Here's my highest resolution image to date. I still have a ways to go, but I'm pretty happy with this one.

--Lonnie

I am contemplating driving up on Skyline Drive (a 9 hour drive for me) to observe the Venus transit. This will nearly double my observation time if successful. Can anyone help with knowledge of a good pull-off with a great eastern horizon?

--Lonnie

This image was taken a few weeks ago. The ISS achieved an 84* elevation on a pass near my location. I used a 16" f5 dob at prime focus and fed the Stellacam EX composite video signal to a DVD recorder in high speed mode. DVD recorders are fairly cheap now. A Telrad was used for guiding (as well as a hug). This is one frame of many that was recorded on my first attempt at satellite imaging.

--Lonnie

I recently imaged the horsehead nebula with one of these and also completed one of the first ever tri-color images with one. I've had mine since early March. They are simply amazing! I have not used an eyepiece since this great observing tool arrived. I use to be the most frequent visitor to my club's dark-sky site with my 16" truss-tube dob. I haven't been there once since the camera arrived. I now work from my driveway and use my 4.2" scope under heavy light pollution to see nearly as much as at the dark-sky site. This camera will triple the aperture of your scope at a minimum (in the realm of light-gathering ability). I have an expensive ccd camera also, but this one is much easier to use and more fun. It can be used for more things, but it doesn't make images as nice or as deep in magnitude as the much more expensive integrated and cooled ccd camera. The Stellacam EX is the biggest advance to come along in amateur astronomy in the past decade, in my opinion, and when everyone eventually gets to see what they can do, everyone will start using them. I will never purchase another eyepiece and I am contemplating selling some of my eyepieces that I spent hundreds of dollars on. They will be worthless in time as the quality of these cameras improve. If you need more info, check the Yahoo videoastro or stellacam EX groups. We have dozens of images posted there.

By the way, I now observe real-time with the live images blown-up on my 20" tv inside my house. I control the scope with The Sky software from over 60 feet away. The image scale is incredible and I don't have to worry about dark-adaptation or cold weather. It is like looking through the largest eyepiece you've ever seen! The stars twinkle and the atmosphere is easily discernible for the same feeling as viewing with an eyepiece, but there's much more there to see. For me, the camera adds about 3 magnitudes to what I can normally see with an eyepiece. The only thing that suffers is some field-of-view, but you'd have to give the FOV up if your scope was 3 times larger anyway. Have I convinced you yet? Here's my latest image of M27 from a 4.2" telescope.

--Lonnie (captain video)

The STV is the best autoguider on the planet. It's also capable of many other fine features like aiding in polar-alignment. It's even a fairly decent black & white video camera. The downside is that it's merely an average ccd camera at best. The chip is very small for the dollars charged.

NUMBER 1: BUY RON WODASKI's BOOK before you purchase any equipment!!! It's worth every penny.

What type of telescope are you going to use for imaging? What focal length is it? Does it have a very good quality mount under it? Does the mount have goto capability?

There will be many opinions displayed here, but I would recommmend considering a low-cost Starlight Express camera, or the SBIG ST237A if you have a scope to match it's characteristics.

Even better, I would highly recommend video imaging to start. It's much easier and doesn't require a high quality mount at all. This may buy you time to further investigate equipment while learning the ropes of ccd imaging. Video is ccd imaging minus the costs and hassles and minus the incredible deep-sky imaging capability (if you know how to obtain it). Video is still capable of deep-sky work though. The Stellacam EX black & white video camera from Adirondack Video Astronomy can easily obtain deep-sky images. Video also offers incredible live images that film, digital cameras, and integrated ccd cameras can't offer. I own three types of media and I use my two video cameras the most because of time.

If you have your heart set on an integrated camera, you might also go cheap (~$500) and try one of the new SAC 8 cameras until you learn the ropes.

Many amateurs have entered ccd imaging without knowing how much time and effort it can take and they think that anyone with the dollars can make great images. That isn't the case. It's not impossible, but there is a learning curve and it is a talent.

--Lonnie

Welcome to the sci-fi channel, where writers like N**** make up stuff as they go. She does this for attention. This is the same person that claimed Hale-Bopp didn't exist just a few years ago. She is the only "pseudo-astronomer" that claims that a star can have a red and white persona existing at the same time in two different points in the sky and that both are observable in images. The only people who claim to suport Nancy are rank amateurs who have no idea what the difference is between noise and points of light in an image and who obviously have no idea what a 13th magnitude object should look like on a ccd image. Let's drop this one quick and get back to real science.

--Lonnie

Very impressive (as usual) Johannes! I keep toying with adding the D60 to my future wants (needs?) list. I hold you personally responsible for my wanting to shell out another $2000 on more camera equipment! The digicams are changing so fast that I keep buying the really cheap ones and just buy another new one each year or so. By the time I add a color wheel to my present integrated ccd camera, I've got some of the cost rationalized, but the price is still up there and I run my scopes remotely from 60 feet away. Is there a way to run remote with the digicams? You only have to focus once, so that's a non-issue, but I would need a remote viewing capability to make sure the image is centered and I would need control of the cameras exposure settings and shutter. Is this possible?

--Lonnie