Posts Made By: Paul Walsh

Storm finally cleared :-)
Just took this with a Nikon D90, Nikkor 70-300 set to 70mm, A=F4.5, ISO 800, 10 second exp.

Could not hold a guide star for the RGBs but I did manage at least a 90 second snapshot of the that screaming nova in M82.

Since there is no gaming forum for us, I'll just stick this here for now. After 30 years of wishin' and hopin', one of my favorite astro-computer games is being re-realized. Originally called Elite, then Frontier Elite for the Amiga (my old fave), then Frontier Close Encounters (a bad port to the PC)David Braben has successfully crowd-funded and is about to go to Alpha release with Elite: Dangerous. Stupid name but this looks like an incredible deep space game. The thing that Sets Braben apart from other designers is his passion for astronomical accuracy. Even the 30 year old games had accurate (though limited) local starmaps and the universe of Elite: Dangerous will have accurate and explorable 3D maps of, not only the 7000 or so stars visible to our naked eye, but 160,000 more only visible in telescopes - plus the coders are working on building out numerous further regions based on Hubble shots. Bot-algorithms will flesh out the rest of the galaxy beyond that to a current goal of 400 billion playable star systems. Nuff said? If you're curious, just Google "elite dangerous" and check out the stills and videos.

I ran across this site: http://www.allsides.com/ the other day and said to myself, "Hey, I know some guys who might argue about this :-)"

-Paul S. Walsh

Progress happeneth on our Delta Rehab dome project. Skirting, weather-striping, seam-dressing with oak strips and top-coating with racing yacht finish yet to go.

Thanks again to Brent Boshart for the control info.

More on this as it develops.

-Paul S. Walsh

oh, yeah, here's the thing in place

-Paul

On the one we just built, as well as on most of the designs I've looked at, the wheels go on the bottom support ring and face up to the dome.

Then a skirt of some kind is attaced to the lower rim of the dome to keep the weather out.

I can visualize what you are proposing but I also think it might run afoul of the "keep it simple" rule, adding complication that can nip at you further down the road.

-Paul S. Walsh

Nice design and beautiful execution.

-Paul S. Walsh

My ISP has a really good one up and running so I'm covered (I average a little less than one a day) but here's another independent anti-spam package I've recommended to friends and gotten favorable feedback on: http://www.mailwasher.net/#

-Paul S. Walsh

In addition to the good advise from the others (dial down your camera's exposure, getting a camera adapter from, say, scopetronix, and filtering) you might also investigate post processing using any of several image processing programs. Even rudimentary free photo adjustment programs of the type that sometimes come bundled with computers or other hardware can be of use.

I use Paint Shop Pro v.8, which retails for a fraction of the cost of Adobe Photoshop, while delivering a lot of the same features, including color channel separation and "curves".

I'm attaching a shot of mine from last night using the following:

80mm Orion Ultrascan achromat
on fixed camera tripod mount.
12mm Radian eyepiece projection
Leica 2.1 megapixel digital camera
attached to scope w/a home made adapter.
http://www.nwlink.com/~filmdos/m111/equipment.htm#Cameras
single exposure using the camera's timer.

Best of luck to you - you're obviously of to a great start.

Don't forget to have fun!

-Paul S. Walsh
http://www.nwlink.com/~filmdos/m111