Posts Made By: K. Michael Malolepszy

We are going to have to invest heavily in new energy technology & deployment on a massive scale no matter what you do or do not believe about GW. There's only so much oil in the ground and sooner or later we will run out. The demand from China, India and other developing countries will ensure that.

"The report by the Paris-based International Energy Agency envisions a "energy revolution" that would greatly reduce the world's dependence on fossil fuels while maintaining steady economic growth..."

Jim Vogel said:

News report on projected cost to decrease CO2

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080606/ap_on_bi_ge/japan_iea_climate_change

Unfortunately many of the same people now complaining about CO2 are also against nuclear energy.

http://www.nirs.org/alerts/12-17-2007/1
http://www.nirs.org/alerts/index.htm
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=14900
http://www.greenpeace.org/seasia/en/news/nukes-endanger-indonesia
http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2008/03/19/youth-protest-indo-us-nuclear-deal/

However there is hope.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/14/AR2006041401209_pf.html

Like most, I've looked at it a couple of times.

Unlike most, however, I've seen what used to be called the 10th planet - 2003 UB313. See

http://mcdonaldobservatory.org/news/releases/2006/0220.html

http://www.astromart.com/forums/viewpost.asp?forum_post_id=378161&poll_id=&news_id=&page=

KMM

Peter Rice said:

Just wondered how many people have actually taken the time to hunt this one down. I've identified it several times using a 10" Cave and a 16" Nightsky and a star chart. Last Friday night, it was very close to a dim star allowing me to detect its motion over a few hours.

Other members of the club are surprised when I show it to them. Just wondered if many people in this forum have looked for it.

Pete

This does bring up an important topic - how to stay awake for the drive home.

http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/people/injury/drowsy_driving1/drowsy.html

"NHTSA data indicate that in recent years there have been about 56,000 crashes annually in which driver drowsiness/fatigue was cited by police. Annual averages of roughly 40,000 nonfatal injuries and 1,550 fatalities result from these crashes."

(from http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/people/injury/drowsy_driving1/drowsy.html )

As someone who used to be a "professional insomniac" - working graveyard shifts for 7 years and rotating shifts for 2 years that included an hour's drive each way to and from my work site alone through the desert - I have a lot of personal experience in what to do when it comes to staying relatively alert all night.

Here's what I found works:

1) Get plenty of sleep before your all-nighter.

2) Use caffeine, but don't over do it if you want to be useful the next day. During my stint on 3rd shift, after much experimentation (including drinking up to 2 entire pots of coffee a shift), I found that 2 cups of coffee at the beginning of my shift was all I needed. After that, I'd drink plain, good old fashioned water.

3) So ... Stay hydrated!

4) Avoid sugar. This cannot be stressed enough - AVOID SUGAR! You'll be alert... for a little while... but then you will crash BIG TIME. I saw this happen all the time with co-workers on 3rd shift. They'd send someone out to get a couple of large sacks of Crispy Creams, donuts, etc. and consume them with gusto, washed down by plenty of coffee. That would be followed by about 60-90 minutes of high-energy talking, laughing, carrying on and having a good old time. Then... they would start dropping like flies hit with a good dose of RAID... every one of them was out after a while - completely useless. Once they were able to wake up, they were very groggy and only a little better than useless when it came to getting work done. I saw this happen not just once, but many, many times. But it never happened to me. Why? I avoided ALL sugar if possible. Instead, I'd;

5) Eat several (evenly spaced in time) small, sugarless meals or snacks - things like fruity & nutty trail mixes (without the M&Ms) and high-protein beans are good brain food.

Also, beware that there's a genetic component. Roughly 1/3 of us have no problems staying awake all night, 1/3 of us can do so with difficulty, and the rest cannot do it at all.

For me, the 12mm T4 Nagler has a lot of kidney-beaning issues if you don't have your head placed just right - much worse than the 13mm T6 (I have both). I have a love/hate relationship with that particular Nagler. But, once you get use to it, the 12mm T4 will give you some great viewing... nice enough that I haven't parted with mine.

One thing about the 13 vs 12 is that the 12 is much heavier than the 13 T6. If balancing your scope is an issue, go with the 13. The view through the 13 is great, too!

I never have seen or used the 11mm.

K. Michael M.

Michael Tencza said:

I'm in the market for a Nagler in the 11-13 mm range. From what I have read so far I am leaning toward an 11 mm T6, but would like to hear from those with experience with these eyepieces.

I saw this coming in 2000, when I bought the house I'm living in now. I knew very soon China and India would begin competing with us for oil, so it was just a matter of time before energy prices would start going steadily up. So, I bought a house within easy bicycle distance of my job - actually close enough to walk to in less than 40 minutes - through one of the nicest urban parks in the US, no less. I fill up about once every 2-3 weeks - about 70% of my gas use is driving to observing sites

Soon I will probably be buying a different house - one that's even closer to work.

K. Michael M.

Paul Kammueller said:

OK I was wondering what others around here might have been doing to save gas since it's been $3-$4. I installed a mileage computer on my car which enabled me to fine tune my driving habits to the point where I was averaging 33-35mpg in mixed city/highway driving on a car that was rated 23mpg city, 32mpg highway under the old EPA measurement standards (21/29 on the new method). Now I've made the issue moot by switching to a job closer to home that requires less travel.

Anyone else doing such things? Anyone get a different car? Hypermiling? Biking or walking? Moving or changing jobs?

I have to echo what others have said - you can't go wrong with Televue Panoptics & Naglers. You may end up going through a dozen scopes searching for the right one(s) for yourself - but a good set of eyepieces are more likely to stay with you. The old Vixen LVWs compare very favorably to TV Pans and are cheaper. Personally, I find the 13mm LVW to be the most comfortable eyepiece I've ever used - no blackout issues no matter where your head/eye is.

You should, if at all possible, try before you buy, or at least solicit opinions from other C11 owners as to how they like their eyepieces. Some may not come to focus in your scopes for all you know. Some may have very critical head placement requirements and produce "kidney bean" & other blackout issues.

Attached is a screen grab of an excel sheet setup to calculate mags, TFOVs, exit pupils for many high-end oculars(eyepieces) for your 11" f/10 SCT.

A few other things to keep in mind are:

Weight - is the eyepiece going to be too heavy for my OTA/mount combination?

Do they have enough eye relief for you?

Are the exit pupils optimized for the objects you are going to observe? (for example, I find that a 2mm exit pupil really gives me the most detail on galaxies in my 11, 16 & 20 inch dobs).

You can get TV specs from

http://www.televue.com/engine/page.asp?ID=144

A few of them - the 41, 35 Pans, the 31, 25 Naglers - can be quite heavy. Eye relief the recent versions of Naglers and most Pans (15mm Pan being an exception, I've read) are more than adequate for most people.

In the 19-22mm range you mention, I find that my 20 T5 Nagler spends A LOT of time in my focusers. It's shorter eye relief than the 22 nagler, but much lighter and slightly better corrected than the 22mm in the f/4.5-f/5.4 scopes I use. However, the 22mm is no slouch! I love them both...

For planets, you may want to consider a simpler design like orthoscopics - the UO 9mm ortho has adequate eye relief and much fewer glass surfaces than the 9mm nagler... and much cheaper, too;

http://www.universityoptics.com/eyepieces.html

The 9mm would give you 311X - which may be too much magnification unless you have decent seeing. But they're cheap enough that you could get a 9 & 12.5 Ortho for less than just about any new panoptic.

K. Michael M.

Tom Smith said:

i have just purchased a celestron c11 and was wondering if you wanted to begin a collection of truly top quality eyepieces where and what is a good place to start. i have the basic sets of eyepieces with the scope but if one were purchasing the first high quality eyepiece that would give you a little of the best views for planets and dso's knowing it would not be the end all what would you recommend? mainly interested in the mm size that would give a little bit of both.
know this is impossible to answer but trying to start somewhere.
thanks
Tom

See

http://www.astromart.com/forums/viewpost.asp?forum_post_id=604453&poll_id=&news_id=&page=

In particular, with regard to radioactive Kodak Aero-Ektars:

http://greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=005cFL

" ... I have a sample of a 7" Kodak Aero-Ektar, which is a lens that has a big reputation for being potentially radioactive.

However, all the articles I've read state that the radioactivity is mainly in the form of alpha emmission, and shouldn't give much call for concern, since alpha particles are quite low energy, and easily stopped by any solid object. I'm told that alpha particles can only penetrate about 40 microns into human tissue.

Anyway, to cut to the chase: I just got our radiation protection officer to run a geiger counter and a dosimeter over the Aero-Ektar, and he found that the rear element was quite hot, giving about 200 counts/second. Worse yet, we discovered that it was mainly GAMMA emmission, since even an inch of perspex and a steel plate hardly affected the counts at all. The active element used in making the glass is Thorium, and a quick check of the table of its decay products confirmed that they're mostly gamma emmitters, after about 6 years of decay.

Dosimeter readings showed that within 1" of the rear lens surface, the dose was above the limit allowed for monitored radiation workers, and only fell to the publicly allowable safe limit at more than 6" from the lens.

I don't think I'll be using that lens as a paperweight, or handling it too much from now on. By all modern standards, that lens would be classed as downright hazardous, and not to be used without protective clothing!

I'll be testing the rest of my lenses as potential gamma sources as well in the near future..."

jess tauber said:

Still haven't decided whether to do anything with my old Kodak Aero-Ektar lens, with its yellowed actinic rear element (gamma gamma gamma gamma gamma cham-eeeeel-eoooon). I suppose it could make a nice astrograph, or something. Do I really want to see sparks?

How many of you out there would want a nuclear refractor in your back yard? Of course I *could* just not tell anyone (and hope they don't think of me when mansters and other interesting fauna and flora start growing out of their head/neck areas).

Jess Tauber

EXACTLY the same thing can be said about the right... it's politics these days. Pretty disheartening.

Jim Babcock said:

To many on the left it is form (the source/site) that is important, not the substance.

Owright - NEVER!!!

I have a black OTA 9.25 and they are good scopes. As far as changes to them goes, you may want to check out this yahoo group and pose your question there:

C9-25 · Celestron 9-25 users group

This group is for the discussion of the Celestron 9.25" telescope in any of its forms.

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/C9-25/

Where the question was asked at least once:

--------

Re: [C9-25] Gray vs Black 9.25

Hi Dom,

It's just a color change. No other differences. Sometime during the summer this year Celestron switched to painting tubes grey instead of the traditional black. I think all of the OTA's are now only available in grey. I believe this applies to all the sizes. I've seen a grey 9.25, 8, and 14" at least. I'll post some pictures soon of the 9.25.

Scott

Rick Akers said:

I'm looking at getting my first telescope and have decided on getting a Celestron 9.25 OTA. I've found two used ones. One is about 6-8 years old, and has a black aluminum body. I think I can get it for around $800. The other is newer, but a bit more expensive ($850), and has the grey aluminum body. Has there been any significant changes over the last 6-8 years in these telescopes?

Background on the bigfoot folks from

http://www.crunchgear.com/2008/08/13/real-bigfoot-carcass-to-be-shown-this-fridayor-not/

http://tinyurl.com/66zrzr

Mike

-----------

Real Bigfoot carcass to be shown this Friday…or not

* By Doug Aamoth
* August 13th, 2008


See that photo there? That comes from the web site Searching For Bigfoot. Don’t bother going there right now. There’s nothing there except a note to check back later “for a big announcement.” The photo is supposedly the body of a real-life Bigfoot, although our own Greg Kumparak says it “looks like a F-ing carpet thrown into a bath tub with a Chewbacca mask on top.”