Posts Made By: Timothy Iafolla

Yup. Not only to free up cops for more important things, but to remove the source of lots of low-level corruption: the bribe that convinces the beat cop to release the guy with a joint. Sensible and effective policy, but WAY to non-cynical for the US.

Tim Iafolla

A decent finder (or refractor of any kind) will have one or more baffles that get smaller as they get closer to the eyepiece. These aren't aperture stops: they are just outside the light cone and prevent stray light from entering the eyepiece.

An aperture stop like you sometimes see on really cheap scopes is right up against the objective lens. It really is there to stop down the lens, to make up for lousy optics, and to artifically increase the f-ratio so that the eyepiece specs aren't as stringent.

Tim Iafolla

Dave,

You are seeing the results of the jet stream. I'm in Maryland, and in spite of the fact we've had a nice patch of clear weather lately, there have only been a couple of nights with good seeing (last night was one of them...it was excellent around midnight). Here's a link to a live jet stream map that I find very useful for predicting whether it's worth breaking out the high-power eyepieces:

http://www.wunderground.com/US/Region/US/2xJetStream.html

If you hit the "animate" button, you'll be able to see the trend and predict seeing for the next 24 hours or so. This area is really the pits....I've found maybe 20 good nights per year, usually on hazy summer nights. Transparency is bad, but planetary and lunar views can be very stable. HTH,

Tim Iafolla

Good post, Rod. You touched on the thing that bothers me the most about this: not the price spikes alone, but the fact that the price of gas NEVER falls back to its previous level, even if oil prices do. Also, there's NO delay between oil prices rising and pump prices rising (even though it takes weeks for the higher priced oil to reach the pump), but when oil prices fall, there is a delay of days or weeks before pump prices fall.

These are the things that should be investigated, moreso than the well-studied forces that raise oil prices. Nobody seems to investigate the pricing policies that lead to steadily increasing gas prices no matter what happens to oil pricing.

Anyone remember the "sugar shortage" back in the early 70's? I do, because it was a personal crisis on a $2/week allowance: soda machine prices suddenly and simultaneously doubled from 25 to 50 cents. The shortage was over in a few months, sugar prices dropped to the previous level, but soda prices NEVER fell back....people were used to the 50 cent price and apparently there was no pressure to change the machines back. Nice racket, with parallels today in gas pricing; we're being trained to expect high prices.

Especially frustrating because as a small businessman, none of these marketing "techniques" are available to me. It's ironic that you have to be extremely rich to gouge people and get away with it.

Tim Iafolla

Hi Alex,

If you don't need the program at all, you can go into Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs, and delete it completely. If you need to run it but don't want it to run at startup, you'll need to remove its shortcut from wherever it's being called from.

There are a couple of places that can call startup programs when you start Windows. The first is easy: click on the Start button, programs, Startup. You can right click and delete whatever you want in there.

The 2nd place requires a little bit of Registry twaeking, so if you're comfortable doing this:

Click Start, Run. Type in "regedit" (no quotes), and hit enter. The Windows registry editor will start. On the left is a folder list. Drill down into it by clicking on the + signs next to the entries. Click on:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
SOFTWARE
Microsoft
Windows
CurrentVersion
Run

The list of entries on the right are some of the programs that run at startup. Find the one that callse the Adobe program, right-click and delete it.

If it's not in that list, there's one other place it might be. Go back to the top of the left window and drill down as follows, then delete the program from the right-hand window:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER
SOFTWARE
Microsoft
Windows
CurrentVersion
Run

When you're done just close the registry editor and your changes will be saved. You'll need to restart Windows for the changes to take place.

If you're not comfortable messing with the registry, there are some free downloads that will allow you to change startup programs. TweakUI is one of them.

Hope this helps,

Tim Iafolla

David Pitre said:


What is a good distance to set the scope for the star?
I'm using this for a 9.25" SCT f/10.

David

David,

The distance doesn't matter much for collimation. However for a star test it has to be far away so that the rays are almost parallel, or else the star test will show sperical aberration. Suiter's book on optical testing has a table listing the required distances for various diameters and f-ratios, but I'm at work and the book is at home. If I remember correctly it's around a hundred meters for a 10" f/10.

One thing to note: an artificial star will usually be mounted low, so your scope will be almost horizontal. This means you'll be looking across a long stretch of ground, which will cause lots of heat distortion unless you wait until early morning. If you can locate your star across a grassy field or a body of water you can minimize this. Also your scope and mount may be flexed or distorted differently when looking horizontal vs when looking up, meaning your perfect collimation may not be perfect any more.

I messed around with artificial stars for a while (I used a single optical fiber lit by a green LED). I found the drawbacks too numerous...now I just use Polaris.

Tim Iafolla

Scuba weights can be useful for counterweights....they come as square slotted chunks of lead from 1 to 6 lb, and as nylon fine mesh bags of lead shot weighing 1, 2, and 4 lbs. The bag-type weights are nice because they will stick to the hook side of velcro. You can just pop them on and off as needed, and if you drop one it won't break your mirror or your toes.

Tim

Good question. A webcam is the perfect place for a novice to start with photography. The exposures are all based on storing and processing a short video of the target, say a minute or so of 0.1 second exposures. Because of this:
- Cost is low ($100 or so for a Toucam with adapter, and excellent stacking and processing software is available free or low cost);
- Because individual exposures are very short, top of the line equipment is not necessary (any guided mount will do);
- Because exposures are short, you can quickly see the results and improve your technique on the fly (no guiding an exposure for hours only to find out the camera shutter was set on 1/1000.
- Very gratifying results are possible with modest equipment (your stock 10" SCT + webcam + laptop can produce results that rival the best professional ground-based photos of 15 years ago.)

But there are limitations: a webcam is best suited for bright objects (lunar/solar/planetary). As soon as you decide to go for deep sky targets, you are generally committing to expensive mounts, high-$$ cameras, and a steep learning curve. It is possible (barely) to do decent deep sky photography with a digital SLR camera and your scope, but that path will be much less rocky if you have had success with webcam photography. Hope this helps,

Tim

Bob,

What size scope? If it's an 8", you are probably somewhere in the $800 range, plus or minus. Check out the Telescope-Catadioptric section of the clssifieds:
http://www.astromart.com/classifieds/list.asp?classified_category_id=13

You would probably do better to sell the padded trunk and the iluuminated guiding eyepiece separately; by themselves they are valuable accessories, but with the scope you will end up basically giving them away.

Hope this helps,

Tim

As much as I dislike this republican congress, and take pleasure in their current distress, I wish the Foley scandal hadn't happened now.

Before the Foley scandal, pressure against Rumsfeld was building nicely; his incompetence is now off the radar. The Woodward book had started a serious debate about the conduct of the war and the competence of the administration, and THAT is what we should base the upcoming election on. There was finally some hard info coming out about congressmen of both parties selling their votes to lobbyists and special interests, and THAT is what we should base the upcoming election on.

This Foley thing is important in its own local way, but it is not relevant to the governance of the country. Even if it causes a wholesale change in the makeup of Congress, Bush can say that happened because of Foley rather than as a referendum on his administration's conduct, and it will give him an excuse to stay the same insane course. The congressional leadership can say that it happened because of Foley and not because of the ingrained financial corruption in Congress, and use it as an excuse to not pass serious lobbying reform.

This election needs to be a referndum about governance, but it is now camoflaged by a parochial sex scandal that will polarize congress even more than it already is.

I want the democrats to take back congress, but not this way.

Tim