Posts Made By: Paul Kammueller

Lot of cross-currents going on. Even with rates practically at zero, money supply seems to be stalling out, quarterly M1 growth has gone negative, and year-over-year M2 is 1.x%. 30yr bond is coming off of overbought yields, however, and a refi boom of sorts is underway. A somewhat disturbing backdrop to the latest rally in the markets, however, is that the Baltic Dry Index appears to have fallen completely out of bed, having abandoned the upward trend that began early-mid 2009. As a quick global economic indicator, this isn't good.

M1 & M2 are starting to show signs of stirring to life; nothing to get excited about, but getting over the sub-1% net-zero no man's land for what seems the first time in a long time.

In reading the historical tables on the flow of funds accounts I found out something I hadn't expected. Take the federal and state/local government debt and add them together. Divide by total nonfinancial domestic debt. You get about 29%. Slightly LESS than it was in... 1975, when 30% of domestic non-financial debt was governments.

I dunno, is the complete absence of activity here some kind of contrarian indicator?

Gold, bonds and stocks rallying, all at the same time. Not normal. Clearly the gold market believes inflation is upon us, the bond market believes deflation is upon us, the stock believes neither -- which is right?

That's what it looks like anyhow, jmho -- occurred well into overbought territory, too

I've studied this a bit because I'd like to do it but read on the web that sometimes increased apparent 'floaters' (the tiny dark spots and threads you sometimes see looking at a blank wall) result after such surgery.

I have personally found that even the everyday existence of 'floaters' in the eye is a significant barrier in seeing fine planetary detail when the exit pupil of the scope gets quite small. It's possible laser surgery could exacerbate this. I have seen one for sale ad by an amateur astronomer citing laser surgery as his reason for getting out of the hobby. So I have decided to not do it for now, maybe wait for the technology to mature more and see what effects the rest of the population experiences.

I don't know about that particular one, but I have the 7mm, 10mm & 21mm. Overall I'd say they're a good value. The 10mm I got was perfect and prompted me to order the 7mm. The 7mm is good but not perfect, there's a couple of tiny field defects in the lens, looks like microscopic chips or dirt inside or something -- only apparent when looking at a vast bright expanse like the lunar surface. But sharpness and contrast are good and the huge FOV and good eye relief makes them great for me. The 7mm & 10mm are my planetary "workhorse" eyepieces. The 21mm, which I got second-hand, is good too but in this range I prefer my Rini 25mm modified Ortho, even though it's optically inferior, for viewing comfort reasons (bigger eye lens in relation to barrel size)and the fact that it's FOV is even bigger. Filter behavior is annoying at first. Barrels are narrower than most EPs, good if you have a tight focuser barrel, but feels "sloppy" if you focuser is a little on the big side.

Being an incurable cheapskate I'll try to answer this one. I have not tried the 38mm 2" Erfle but I do have the 38mm 1.25" Erfle SurplusShed eyepiece (no longer available). I have had generally good luck with Surplusshed eyepieces. They seem to be generally good deals, but this is not UO or TeleVue quality stuff either, some surfaces coated and some not, expect a few internal reflections looking at the moon, teeny flaws in the glass, etc. My most-used low-power eyepieces are SurplusShed eyepieces, or Rini's bought through SurplusShed. But I've had a lemon too amongst the cheapest ones.

Here's my lineup, all are 1.25" barrels:

38mm SurplusShed Erfle (no longer available) -- Great low-power eyepiece, great eye relief, reasonably good field integrity, my favorite "finding" eyepiece and low-mag general eyepiece.

29mm SurplusShed "Erfle" -- I put Erfle in quotes because the field just doesn't seem big enough to me for any sort of widefield eyepiece. But optically it seems pretty good and sharp. It's a nice low-power lunar eyepiece for me.

25mm Rini Modified Ortho (no longer available) -- at $15 this was the deal of the century as far as I'm concerned. Edge sharpness is rotten, fairly severe field curvature, but the field is ENORMOUS, Nagler-esque, and hey, it's 15 lousy bucks!! My current favorite deep-space eyepiece for immersive effect. Note that this eyepiece was bought through SurplusShed but not made by them though.

25mm Rini Modified Plossl -- good field, good sharpness, good general low-power eyepiece. (sharper than the modified ortho but much smaller field)

9.5mm SurplusShed plossl. At $17 just useable, this one was a disappointment for me, I eventually decided to remove the optics (upon disassembly they appeared damaged, scraped) and now use it for a collimating eyepiece in my dob. Have heard from other sources that quality control is a bit spotty. Sometimes you get what you pay for.

For my higher-powered ranges (7mm to 16mm) I use Sieberts and Konigs, but for low power these cheapies seem fine and are generally a good deal.

Just call me the Frugal Astronomer.

13 arcmin of full illumination is a little small if you're planning on using 2-incher wide field eyepieces. You could get away with less with smaller eyepieces or higher powers. With a 35MM wide-field type eyepiece you're going to have a field over a degree across, somewhere in the 60-100 arcmin range. You don't have to go fully illuminated all the way to the edge -- how big you choose to make the fully-illuminated field can depend on what percentage of illumination you're willing to tolerate at the periphery of the field.

Don't see any geometrical optical reason it shouldn't work. But baffling is tricky, if you use it somewhere where there's a little stray light from above, or if the moon is out, you could get lots of scattered light coming from unexpected directions since the eyepiece will be pointing partly up toward the open end of the tube / upper cage.