Posts Made By: Mark Bracewell

OK, I'll bite.

On all but the last question - I'd have to say go and have a look here:
http://pw2.netcom.com/~ahighe/astroequ.html

On the last, I'm a fan of protostar - http://www.fpi-protostar.com/diagmnt.htm

There's a lot of decisions/tradeoffs to make when building a scope, it's great fun, you'll want to spend some time researching. Most of all, you want to write down some specific goals you have in order to make your decisions lead you to what you're after, e.g. it has to be cheap or light or fit in some specific car or all the above or....

Best of luck! Keep us posted.

Long story, but I'll try to make it short and to the point. If you want to know more, there are links at the end of this post.

Stanford University has a unique Radio Telescope of value both for it's potential as a research and teaching facility and for historical reasons (see photo in my sig). The fate of this telescope is currently in the hands of the Dean of Engineering. He wants to demolish it. He has given no reason why.

For the last year, a group of concerned people has been trying to convince the Dean to allow us to operate the site for the benefit of the student and faculty of Stanford, and for the general public. Despite the fact that we have met all of the Dean's requirements (faculty sponsorship and so on), the School of Engineering still plans to proceed with the demolition. Still, no reason why.

We are now appealing to the President of the University, we are offering to lease the site, at our expense, and operate it. To help bring attention to our proposal, we have set up an online petition to show that there is public support for such a venture.

I encourage you learn about the proposal and to read the petition, and sign it if you feel so moved.

http://www.petitiononline.com/dishes/petition.html

To learn more about this site, please see

FBOA (us folks who are trying to save it): http://www.bambi.net/stanford_dishes/rescue.html

Gee it's nice to see a scope that looks like a scope. Nice UTA, looks light. Going to put some kind of light baffle on there?

Sounds very sweet indeed! Tell us *everything*!