Posts Made By: Fred Lusk

Tyler…

Extraordinary set of photos.

Fred

John…

"…Sliding down the razor blade of life…"--Tom Lehrer

Fred

Dean…

I had a 1973 RX-2 (4-speed, 4-door) from 1976-1987. My dad bought it new and I got it when he bought a pickup.

Gawd I loved that rotary engine. In many ways it was the most fun car I ever owned…a pocket rocket. Even though both subsequent vehicles (3.8L Buick Century and 4.0L Jeep Cherokee 4x4) were/are actually quicker, the Mazda had a quicker feel. And it was so smooth and quiet. It would accelerate up the Grapevine in 4th gear (for those who don't know, the Grapevine is where Interstate 5 climbs out of the San Joaquin Valley over the Tehachapi Mtns heading south toward Los Angeles…maximum grade is a bit over 6%, which is not overly steep for a mountain road, but is for an interstate). The car was well-built and easy to work on, except for having two distributors. Plus the back seat and trunk were very roomy for such a small car.

I used to street race (shhh…don't tell my teenage kids), and, by picking the competition carefully, I did quite well. I could best a six-cyl mid-60s Mustang, Porsche 914 (I think that's the right one, the little boxy mid-engine thing), etc. At the time, I could outrun every other Japanese car but a Datsun 240Z. The most fun, though, was the time I pulled up to a stop light on a major street in front of the college and found myself alongside a 351 Cleveland Mustang and a 350 Grand Prix revving their engines at each other. When the light turned green, I entered the fray. When I hit 60 mph, the Mustang was half a car length ahead of the Grand Prix, which was half a car length ahead of me. Just then, a long-haired, sgraggly looking guy in the passenger seat of Grand Prix leaned out the window, and yelled in a drunken sort of drawl "Daaammmm, that Jap car's fast!"

Fred

Paul…

Excellent! I like these types of comparisons too.

Fred

Mark…

I kinda know how you feel. From Nov. 22 until Mar. 7 my scope was in hibernation. For me, though, it's usually not the cold (it rarely gets below about 28° here in Fresno), but the fog--we see a lot every winter. That, and my schedule didn't mesh very well with the few good days during that period.

I don't want to make you feel bad, but the past two weeks here have been unseasonably warm (high 80s instead of the normal high 60s) and the skies have been mostly clear. We were out with our club last night at Hensely Lake (30 miles north of Fresno at elev 600'). We had about 20 scopes. It was shirt-sleeve weather until about 10 p.m., and one guy was wearing shorts until about 2 a.m. Seeing was pretty good last night, but it was excellent last Saturday when I set up an impromptu star party. Last night was supposed to be a Messier Marathon, but only one guy was really working on it. Most of the rest of us were watching Jupiter's moons and Saturn and just having fun finally getting the observing season kicked off. The winter blues have passed here.

Fred

Jake…

I second Don's recommendation. I have a C5+ (same OTA as your Nexstar). I bought a 1.25" Televue Everbright diagonal last year, and it's worth at least 0.5 mag over the standard Celestron prism diagonal, plus it's sharper and better aligned (i.e. when I rotate it, the image barely moves, unlike the prism).

Fred

Alex…

With all due respect, Victor Davis Hansen is NOT an idiot. He's a conservative and thus you may not what he wrote or how he wrote it, but he's NOT an idiot. His reasoning here is pretty solid and, frankly, I liked his use of irony.

FYI, Victor Davis Hansen is a professor here at California State University, Fresno. He specializes in ancient Greece and Rome…and some other things. He also consults with the US gov't on current events like immigration, the Middle East, etc, and has written several books (the latest is "Mexifornia"). As a result, he's been interviewed on the local radio and TV stations quite a bit lately. I have heard him several times over the past two years, and he is obviously quite bright. His views are well considered and he goes to great lengths to back up them up with facts and reasoning. I know two people (one a liberal and one a middle-of-the roader) who had classes from him about ten years ago and they have echoed this opinion.

Fred

Maurice…

Outstanding!!!

I wish I had known about this sooner. My engineering degree was a lot of work.

Fred

Charles…

I have a Celestron C5+ (admitedly much smaller than your 16"). Image shift is essentially zero.

At one time or another, I have looked through one or more 5", 8", 9.25", 11", and 14" Celestrons and 8", 10", 14" and 16" Meades (no 12" yet). My sampling is far too small to be scientific, but my experience is that the smaller scopes generally have less image shift than the larger scopes. One exception to this trend is a Nexstar 11 (just moved with its owner to Arizona) that had only the very slightest image shift and a couple of scopes of both brands that have been "worked on" to virtually eliminate image shift.

I strongly suspect the weight of the primary mirror is the main culprit in this trend…the focusing mechanisms may not be scaled up as well as they could be. Size for size, the Celestrons have been a bit better than the Meades with respect to image shift, but not always so.

Fred

Maurice…

I second the !!!!WOW!!!!!!!. It's almost like being there.

Fred