Posts Made By: Luis Bartolomei

Anyone tried these out yet? I'm thinking of picking one up. It would save me the $$ of mounting a guidescope on my already taxed Vixen GP. I'll be shooting with my ST-237 through my TV-102.

I've posted this message on other threads. Hope it's o.k.

I'm with you Doug. I have his three volumes and any time my mind begins to slip on the majesty of the universe, I only need to read a bit of his books. His work is truly inspirational to me. Thanks for the article.

Luis Bartolomei

What is that thing?

My God, man! That's almost Hubble. That image stole my breath.

I own a C-8 and a Siebert Black Night. The Black Nights just got their first light this weekend. They are wonderfull and come to full focus without any type of adapter. The moon was awesome to see with two eyes. Even almost full, the detail was rich and vivid.

What I find very disheartening is that the American public seems to have a very short political memory. I will bet money that Bush will be re-elected anyway, despite the administration's transparent attempts at qualifying Saddam's regime as an imminent threat to the security of the world. At most, it appears that Iraq may have been tangentially and very tenuosly involved in the Sept 11 attacks - at most. Saudi Arabia seems much more involved.

Its become clear in my mind that this administration's true goal is to open and 'oasis of democracy' in the middle east, in part to destabilize theocratic and dictatorial regimes in the area (read: Iran). Saddam was a great excuse to go in, but emphasising on WMD's was not smart in retrospect. Turns out there aren't any.

We broke rank with the UN, our allies and most of the world on allegedly bad intelligence. We started a war on the same. Civilian men, women and children and our men and women in unifrom are still getting wounded and killed alomst daily. If the mass graves that have been discovered retroactively justify our actions in Iraq, we better be ready to send our fighting men and women to the ends of the world to fight for other peoples' independence. That's the precedent that I beleive this was sets for the US. I don't think its a good one.

Call me a pessimist, but I don't think crushing a regime and sending in troops to police will do away with tribal and religious rivalry in existence for over 1,200 years in that part of the world.

David,

I'm with you. Buying the PST was a major investment for me. I think it is a great solar scope, and I enjoy the incredible views of the prominences, spots, filaments, etc. (small scale, mind you, but terrific nonetheless). I've never double stacked it, and I have no plans to do so either. I believe that many people feel the same way about the PST 'a la carte'.

Thank you all for your encouragement and tips. I'll tweak around to see what else I can come up with.

There are some truly amazing images posted in this forum. I hope to catch up at some point, but my time and budget are so limited. I'll try taking images any time I can, especially during these short Minnesota summers.

Best,
Luis B.

The GP-E: "E" stands for "economy," as you rightly point out. The main differece for imaging, in my mind, is the lack of polar alignment scope. I think the guts are otherwise the same as the GP.

I use my GP for imaging with a C-8 Fastar tube. So far it's worked out pretty well. I have no means to autoguide, so my images so far have been unguided. Provided good polar alignment, I have no complaints. But I am shooting at f2, with very small pixels.

WOW . . . (drool).