Posts Made By: James McSheehy

I listen to their podcasts on occasion, but I'm not sure about letting Google (via G+) creep on what I do in this hobby.

Excellent detail in the high-res image. How difficult is focusing in this fast system? Is your focuser temperature compensated?

Crystal fluorite is widely available from several sources in the U.S., Germany, and China. Large blanks up to 14" are used in optics that operate at UV wavelenths in the lithography machines that process semiconductor wafers.

That said, even "crystal" fluorite can have lattice defects or inclusions that make it unsuitable for precision optics. For an objective lens, it has to be graded and selected just like any other glass.

These significant events happen several times a year, usually over the open ocean, and are recorded by the defense satellites that stare at the Earth looking for missile launches. Most explode in the atmosphere before striking the ground.

A meteor exploded over Utah a couple of years ago and I was in my back yard observatory around midnight when it happened. We live in Colorado near the Utah border far enough away that it was low in the sky and I never saw the fireball directly. The sky turned bright blue and trees cast shadows like it was daylight. They estimate that chunk of rock was only about the size of a basketball, much smaller than the one that exploded over Russia this morning.

According to Nobel laureate Paul Krugmam and the Modern Monetary Theory crowd, deficits don't matter and besides, we have no debt crisis. The reason we still have to pay taxes is that paying federal taxes informs us plebes which currency to use in our consumption activities.

Now get back to unbridled optimism, Summer of Recovery # 4 is just ahead. We are the people we've been waiting for.

Forward.

Floyd Blue said:

I am wondering if anyone is succefully imaging using Windows 8.
I have an almost 3 year old laptop and the Windows 7 machines are getting harder to get. I am wondering if I need to get a backup laptop before they are no longer available?
Blueman

That is a good question Floyd, and it begs the larger question, what is the future of 90% of the software and apps that we use for astro imaging? Windows 8 says goodbye to all the XP compatability and drivers that are still in regular use by this community. The software industry is moving away from "hobby" apps sold outside of controlled, curated "app stores". Apple started this a couple of years ago and now Microsoft is following with its own version. I expect in a few years it will be difficult to install and run applications that are not connected with one of the stores and blessed by the OS as safe to use. These stores have many things to like, price, confidence, easy access, etc., but they also tend to cull out the developers who might serve an obscure hobby like ours. Think about the dozens of small developers, or even a project like ASCOM, where given enough headwinds, they might just say the heck with it.

Another shift is the move to cloud-based applications accessed by a subscription. These require web access (what, your imaging rig in the boot heel of NM isn't online?) and it could affect our choices down the road. I also see tablets and smartphones replacing laptops in portable rigs, with wireless becoming the control interface of choice. Another big change that would obsolete much of the USB-centric gear being offered today.

Me?, no worries, I'm old and headed for greener pastures. But based on their recent purchases from this company, here's what DHS is concerned with:

http://www.letargets.com/estylez_ps.aspx?searchmode=category&searchcatcontext=%7E010000%7E010100%7E010101.2

If their server is "busy", here's another take on their offerings:
http://community.allhiphop.com/discussion/490373/introducing-no-more-hesitation-the-new-age-cardboard-target-for-the-new-age-cop

When you have 1.2 billions rounds of ammo available, every target is a "No More Hesitation" opportunity for social justice!

Forward.

Obama's actions are straight out of Nineteen Eighty Four, Doublethink:

"The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just as long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies – all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth."

http://xkcd.com/1174/

Why do you repeat this propaganda? It's all baseline budget smoke and mirrors -- there are no real cuts in spending, even with the "draconian" Republican version. The cucumber is now a pickle and it isn't changing back.