Posts Made By: Guy Jordan

Michael-
By way of cheerleading, please let me say you deserve your pay. Too often people will brag about tipping a waiter 20% but will cheap out on professional services. I may not be able to afford all the toys I want but I try to appreciate their value and pay for what is important to me.

From a design for manufacturability perspective I'd say this is a classic situation of design trade-off. Quality, speed and price is in constant tension. The customer has to pick one to sacrifice because they can't have all three.
-Guy

While I realize this could spark one of those shooting wars :-) I am looking for better discusion than Ford vs. Chevy. I have not had the oportunity to use a Tak. telescope but do own a Vixen 120NA on a GP mount. I'm curious how Takahshi products compare to the Vixens (at least the upper end Vixens) and where people have found the extra mone worth it and where it was not worth the extra costs.

To start it off, I did not realize how much color I'd be seeing with the NA design, nor how big the tube would be for the aperture/ratio. I have yet to have a night of good seeing with it so I have a hard time really understanding what it is capable of... let alone what a "better" instrument could do.

Thanks-
-Guy

Is there a clear progression of APO designs? I've read about triplets of standard, ED and fluorite "glass", and of doublets made from fluorite and ED glass. I assume all APO's are not created equal but is there a clear heirachy?

Then there are Super APO's, quad lenses, and TOA... just a little confusing.
-Guy

Can anyone give a history of triplet refractor objectives? I'm curious when the color corection got good enough to warant the "APO" moniker. I assume this is when triplets sarted out but I somehow doubt RC started it all in 1981(?) when I read the piece in Sky and Telescope about his oiled triplet lens at an ATM event.

Or, maybe this has been done to death and one of you could point me to a web address?

-Guy

I just saw, on page 81 of the Nov. 2004 issue of Astronomy Magazine, a Televue mounted on an upside down cradle of a Gibraltar mount. The picture looks to be of an older telescope. Is this a "classic" wrong picture or a new one? The magazine article was a retrospective of the amature astronomy hobby so I presume this is a vintage picture. Does anyone here have more on this?

-Guy

I read with interest the long threads about trust and integrity but I can't shake one point. Regardless of ultimate cause, a manufacture like Burgess Optics cannot realistically blame a vendor for what they themselves ship to the end customer. If a manufacturer is going to "trust" a vendor to deliver product ready to use or "dock-to-stock" then there must be safeguards in place to verify this trust periodically.

IMO a manufacturer who does not verify and check their vendors quality is gambling with both their reputation and the customers money. Additionally, the whole product system must be verified before shipment -- in this case, the whole optical assembly (remember Hubble).

As a consumer I hope BO gets their act together enough to ship good product without the vapor-ware syndrome. Hinting at the end product properties is as bad as setting the official specs prematurely. Even though final specs can change, doing so only breeds customer dissatisfaction.

-Guy

As a starting point, search the forums for celestron vs meade and start reading 8O ! This is mostly a Chevy vs. Ford type argument where you will find support for any (and EVERY) opinion.

My take on the debate is that right now they are very comparable. Celestrons 9.25" and 11" models are bigger than the Meade 8" and 10" models so they will "see" more. After than I will only point out that 2" accessories are better on anything but the 8" models because of a too narrow passage through the main mirror.

-Guy

Introducing

Declán Lee Jordan

Born: January 26, 2005 @ 11:06 am
Size: 9 pounds 5 ounces, 22.5 inches long


Our first child.

Balzer's Substrate Cleaner was mentioned recently in a post but I'm not finding a listing for it through Google. Can anyone give me a lead or link for manufacturer or supplier? I'd love to see an MSDS or spec. sheet for it too.

Thanks-

-Guy

"A new study from the University of Edinburgh and Pennsylvania State University suggests a smart solution to one of the biggest challenges facing the optics and electromagnetics sector – how to produce near-perfect lenses cheaply."

http://www.physorg.com/news6276.html


How realistic or applicable is this?

-Guy