Posts Made By: Ron Oehlert

I do not know about your issue, but once I loaned an eyepiece to another club member in order for him to see if he wanted one for himself. He later returned my eyepiece not to me direct, but to my place of employment & when I got it, it was not my eyepiece but one with a seriously scratched eyelens. Of course there was no proof of this exchange but I learned my lesson and also decided future club membership was not for me (an earlier event with another club one of my eyepieces was stolen out of my scope when I was not attending it). I'd suspect the new owner exchanged his for yours and is attempting to bilk you. What is one bad rating worth vs your otherwise excellent ratings?

While my 1st scope was a 60mm f/8 refractor, I consider such aperture too small for astro views even on the Moon due to insufficient light grasp and resolution. Your 80mm should be example enough to decide, will you really be satisfied with LESS resolution and light grasp? If you intend to use it for birding or Daytime terrestrial use, that is something different. I now use 60mm as finders on 6" and 10" reflectors and am considering going to 80mm for finder use; my backyard sky in a town of 16K pop. barely reveals the Milky Way as a misty glow but 2 or 3 miles out in the country reveals the Milky Way in all its' naked-eye structural glory. In rural Kansas 60mm will reveal the Veil Nebula for example, but barely so which is adequate for finder use in my estimation and no more (unless one just wanted to claim he saw it with such small aperture). For transportation by car or with stairs at home, a 6" f/8 reflector (even GEM mounted) is easily as portable as a 60mm refractor yet reveals so much more on the Moon, planets, and deep sky or close double stars (even by a handicapped individual like me).

Check these Facts. Altho this is the Politics forum category of an Astronomy-related site, I find it telling that except for myself and Rod there is little or no astronomy interest among the other posters; You and Greg at least have scopes but also rarely if ever participate in the astro forums or excepting Greg have few if any site Ratings from other amateur astronomers despite sometimes long-term site membership. IOW your primary interest here IS political rather than astronomy.

I presently have Orion's straight-thru 6X30, 9X50 and 9X60 finders. Their TFOV and AFOV both get slightly smaller with each increase in aperture. Extending your query, neither TFOV nor AFOV is of any great matter with these finders. What DOES matter is aperture and image size, because if you cannot glimpse that small faint DSO you cannot easily locate it even with increased FOV. Star-hopping from charts with a small finder is difficult due to limited light grasp and stars seen; a low-power eyepiece of about 1 degree TFOV or more in the main scope is better-suited for this method. On my 6" and 10" reflectors I use self-assembled 15X60mm RA finders with 3.5 degrees TFOV. I'm working on a 16X75mm finder project for the 10" scope and will then put it's present 60mm finder on my 8" reflector (which currently has a 50mm finder). The larger 60mm 15X finders permit sweeping up faint DSO's quickly and easily whether under suburban or rural skies. While Orion's 9X60 finder has a few degrees wider TFOV than my 15X versions, the smaller image size is to me a hindrance greater than the FOV. With my 5" and 3" refractors, I removed their IMHO inadequate 30mm finders and use the two finder mounting rings as a bulls-eye pointing device along with a low-power eyepiece (16X to 30X) in the scope. I also have a red-light pointing finder, but it requires batteries for power while a pair of finder-rings do not and they are easily seen sihouetted against the sky even under dark rural conditions. Knowing the Constellations, with my large finders I can find objects manually faster than Go-To computer systems.

GRS has now rotated out of view around the limb and Ganymede's shadow transit is approaching the central meridian; still a nice view tonight.

How nice it is to ascribe what we don't understand to the doings of invisible friends and enemies.

Two hours later, the pairings persist although the outer moon has slipped out of line with the other three.

Two Kansas schools, KU & Wichita State University, will meet Sunday after 22 years since their last game together. Locally this will be a big one but alas, only one can advance to the Sweet 16. WSU made the Final Four two years ago and KU is, well, KU.

Europa has now left the slightly less bright area near Jupiter's limb and is lost in the Equatorial brightness. The GRS has also rotated out of view around the western limb.

Apparently you do/did not self-develop film, so I suggest that the only difference in equipment for film or digital astro photography is the *camera* used. Self-processing digital astro images with your computer permits far greater versatility than the former pushing of film speed in the development process or slide-copying or hypering. Besides which, film and developing chemicals (or commercial processors) are not as readily available as they were prior to digital photography. Consider that the cost of a digital imager is one-time vs film and developing is continuous with use. Unless your are nostalgic about this, amateur astrophotography has become quite impressive since the advent of the digital age, leaving the film era results in the dust. I used to take and self-process astro images on film with self-made film holders of lunar, solar-system, and deep-sky objects including Halley's Comet.