Posts Made By: jess tauber

Has anyone built an over-under binoscope from refractors? Looks like it should work. Two 90 degree diagonals offset the light cones for each tube, the lower tube's upward at an angle, and the upper's down at the same angle for IPD, then one can view straight through, or add extra surfaces for 90 or 45 degrees.

Would such a system have any advantages or disadvantages relative to the usual side-by-side binoscope?

Jess Tauber

I know its important to have matched ep's for binoviewers- how does this differ from matching them for a binoscope, where there are two different OTA's, which are unlikely to have identical objectives when bought off-the-shelf?

Also, would low power Barlows, where their position in the tube changes the magnification slightly, be able to match the observer's fields of view? I'm not worried about the very edge, just the main part more centrally in any case.

Thanks.
Jess Tauber

My father is a fan of Boston Legal- I'd never seen it before. Tonight a rerun had four Star Trek characters- Kirk, Odo, Neelix, and Quark.

Am I detecting a pattern here....or do I need to adjust my tricorder????

Jess Tauber

Probably people have posted lots about this before- is there a table (or formula(e)) for stating or determining approximate performance equivalencies from apo to achromatic lenses versus focal ratio (maybe aperture as a third variable)? I just picked up an old 80mm Towa achromat (F/15). Curious....

Jess Tauber

I just picked up with a vintage scope a set of old Towa ep's, most of which either a) have the barrel stuck on so they won't unscrew and/or b) have rattling lenses inside. Can't do anything about b) until I take care of a).

Suggestions?? Thanks!

Jess Tauber

I was testing my new toy- a vintage Towa 339 80mm f/15 scope. It came with a bunch of old .965 in. ep's, and of course I had my own sets of this size and 1.25 to look through.

All of these gave a coma-like flare off to one side in the scope looking at Mercury, Venus, and Jupiter. Some folks I've discussed this think the scope objective needs collimation- haven't tried that yet. Or maybe its my eyes- I view without glasses, yet have astigmatism and perhaps the beginnings of cataracts.

Turning the OTA didn't change the orientation of the flares, nor did rotating the ep's or of diagonal when using them. But neither did rotating my head to get a different vantage through my eyes (either eye).

What got me thinking though was trying out an old microscope binoviewer in the scope- with the smaller old standard ep sizes for these I looked at the moon and Venus with 2 B&L widefield 10x ep's.

With this setup I didn't get any of the pronounced flaring, and doubling of images on bright objects was minimized (the moon). In fact the setup gave me the most pleasant, crispest views I've seen on near-space objects.

So is it something about binoviewing that did this, or the widefield ep's, or are my telescopic ep's at fault, or some other explanations, or combinations thereof?

Jess Tauber

And yet now evolution HAS been observed in real time, and instrumentation (such as MRI) allows us to 'see' the professor's brain without having to take it from his head.

BTW, absolute zero temperature may make sense from the POV of electromagnetism and atomic/molecular movement, but there is still energy inside the system that might be removed (even if we don't know how yet)- tied up with nucleons, for instance, or confinement (weak and strong forces).

At the time Einstein was a student nuclear forces were barely recognized.

The photon may have an opposite- which I've called the 'skoton'. Photons interact with normal spin 1/2 matter, but skotons wouldn't, rather they would prefer to deal with spin 3/2 particles which travel faster than light (the interaction would slow them down) and also travel backwards in time.

You don't wanna mess with skotons (if you COULD- which you can't). They would suck the life right out of you. Maybe one day new technologies will incorporate them. Colder than cold- darker than dark. Pure evil? Small price to pay for time reversal. Open a vein...sign right here.... 8)

Jess Tauber

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090129102336.htm

Hope this is of interest

Jess Tauber

The news feeds were reporting today 'Pope Holds Giant Mass in Africa'.

He must be a very brave soul. Normally when I go to a foreign country I want to know more about local language, customs, certainly the fauna and flora, what diseases might be lurking, and so forth.

To just go and put your arms around a large lump of uncharacterized stuff, without knowing first what it is.....that's faith for you.

Jess Tauber

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090313171318.htm

Jess Tauber