Posts Made By: Fred Lusk

I'm sorry to hear about this. It's never fun having your ride smacked.

Conditions look dry and with good visibility. Did they miss a turn?

It must be serious if Al Franken can figure it out.

Fraser Cain and Dr. Pamela Gay do a fun podcast called "Astronomy Cast" that is available through iTunes and probably elsewhere.

Check your owner's manual for its "operating environment" specs, then figure you can probably operate outside this range at least a little. How much depends largely on the manufacturer's safety factors that are built into these specs (I have no idea what their safety factors are) and partly on your particular circumstances and your particular camera. Also, batteries don't do so well at extreme temperatures, but there are ways around this.

For example, my Olympus E-5, which is fully weather sealed and is designed for harsher service than most DSLRs, has specified "operating environment" temperatures of 32°F-104°F for operation and -4°F-140°F for storage and humidities of 30%-90% for operation and 10%-90% for storage. I have operated this camera in temperatures as low as 25°F and as high as 110°F and humidities as low as 15% and as high as 100% (i.e. fog) and it never skipped a beat. I have also drenched this camera in the spray from several major waterfalls in Yosemite National Park, again without it skipping a beat. My older but similarly spec'd Olympus E-1 endured even more extreme temperatures (20°F-115°F), many more waterfall spray drenchings, and several inch+ per hour rainfall events, also without skipping a beat. Mark Humpage in the UK treats his E-5 even worse than I do (http://www.markhumpage.com/), including leaving it out all night in freezing temperatures.

Other manufacturers also weather seal some of their higher-end cameras and these can probably tolerate simliar treatment. However, most DSLR are not weather sealed and may not otherwise be designed for such extreme temperature and humidities. My son-in-law has operated his Olympus E-520 DSLR (a non-weather sealed entry-level DSLR) in temperatures ranging from 25°F to 105°F, but he bags his camera in dense fog, near waterfalls, and in the rain.

To the left, economics is scored like golf: low score wins. I'm betting your wife is now a winner according to the left.

Nice work. The movements in the tail are really noticable.

That would be tough to haul around to public star parties. I don't think it will fit in my Jeep.

That's a really nice setup.

After a meeting in Sunnyvale yesterday, I decided to take a side trip to Lick Observatory before heading back to Fresno. Your setup looks a bit like the Great 36-inch Refractor but without the wood paneling in the dome.

Opteka Timer Remote (http://opteka.com/timerremote.aspx)

My first one broke (my fault), so I replaced it with two more, one for my Olympus E-1 and one for my Olympue E-5.

The unit is cheap ($30) and economically made, but it works as advertised. I didn't want to say "cheaply made" because it isn't, but it also isn't up to the construction standards of a typical Olympus product, or Nikon, or Canon, or any of the other major camera manufacturers.

It has good basic time lapse functions, which was ideal for last year's annular solar eclipse and Venus transit.

However, the Optekas will soon be partly/mostly superseded by TriggerTrap, which can do so much more.

Ernie…

The two objects are different. First, they came from different directions. Second, I saw real time video from Australia via NASA that showed 2012 DA14 AFTER the Russian event.