Posts Made By: Alex McConahay

Go here

http://www.astropics.com/

And see what you can do with your camera. follow Wally's techniques--all very simple, just open up the shutter for a minute or so, and light things with a flashlight-- and see what happens.

Alex

I've asked the same question......

I believe you can still get more pixels with film than you can with anything digital. (Anything we could buy, anyway.) You can also get a wider field. So, if it is simply an issue of resolution--number of pixels per square millimeter-- then I'd say film is still superior.

However, imaging is a lot more than pixels. You have to track a lot longer for film than an equivalent ccd exposure. It is much harder to focus a film camera than a digital. With a film setup you don't know what you did until much later. With digital, you can reshoot then and there if need be.

SO, get out the OM-1, (I plan to do so tonight and tomorrow if the weather allows). However, I don't plan to update my scanner. I'll just save my pennies and go to digital.

(Besides--I want a DSLR for daytime use.)

Alex

Thanks, all.

Turns out, we set that big old telescope out, and the focuser was completly discombobulated. Apparently the two bearings that held the knobs and move the tube had fallen out. That took a while to fix, and when we finally got it together, the scope worked very well. There was no need to adjust tube length, even with the paracorr and whatever eyepeice we used. I assume that before we shortened the mirror cell, the eyepieces had come to focus further out.

Anyway, thanks for the help.

Alex

The problem with the Bush Foreign Policy was seen in the first few months of his administration--long before September 11. And I believe Rice has a lot to do with it. Rice was a very bright Cold War expert. And George W. Bush's earliest foreign policy announcement was about how, among other things, we did not really need to deal with China. Shortly thereafter, one of our spyplanes was accidentally (on purpose) bumped by a Chinese jet. These games of chicken had been going on for some time without incident--because in the complicated world of Foreign Policy, one country largely respects the other. Then one country (ours) announces we no longer respect the other. So the Other (China) just lets one of its hotshot pilots get a little careless.

Part of the national security advisor's job is to keep the president from doing stupid things like saying we do not respect other countries. (Even if we don't.....it is called diplomacy. Not being diplomatic is not good for our national security.) And our president has done it far too many times in thepast four years, all the while being adivised on such matters by Rice.

I have no question about Rice's superior intelligence. And I had no problem with Colin Powell being black, or his predecessor being a woman (as the thread later raved on about).

I do have a problem with an intelligence that is so focused that it does not take time to deal with the realities of international Foreign Policy. Rice may know a lot, and be very intelligent. But as a National Security Advisor, she is stuck in a us-versus-them cold war that ended long ago and does not recognize the realities of what is necessary in foreign policy.

Alex

Plenty of people have tried it, and Hutech even sells a version modified as so. It works fine for astrophotographs, but pretty well ruins it for regular photos.

Alex

Could they have been stolen?

Alex

Luca,

You did not say, but I assume before you went to the eastern horizon, you did do an alignment of a star at zenith at about zero dec. This is the first step.

Then after you finish an eastern horizon star alignment, you have to go back and do another "zenith-0 dec" alignment, and then another eastern just to be sure. Resetting the azimuth, in short, means you have to go back and reset the altitude. It is an iterative process.

Also, you say "The movement was very very small though and for the most part of the 5 minutes almost undetectable" makes it sound like periodic error. In short, it is stable for some time, and then it moves. Periodic error acts just like this. It is not in the alignment, but in the drive mechanisms.

Alex

Eric,

Beautiful image.

And as for your statement: "I've fallen into the trap of working on an image so much that I either give up or never post because I keep trying to perfect it. "

It reminds me of what is said about a mirror maker's obsession for perfection: "You know the mirror is done when you pry it from the optician's cold, dead, hands."

Don't make us wait so long next time.

Alex

Following a standard argument (made by David Hume, I believe in his argument about miracles), most people presented with evidence of what they do not believe would simply not believe the evidence or say that it does not prove the point.

They would not say "It's a miracle." They would either say "It did not happen," or "Maybe something happened but that does not prove what you think it does." In short, for many people, there is no such thing as irrefutable evidence of what they do not believe.

Alex

The obvious place would be scattered around the desert in the middle east--but then we would have to go to the political forum.

Alex