Posts Made By: Greg Nowell

http://www.astromart.com/articles/article.asp?article_id=663

I posted an article to sum up my thoughts on the topic of the new upgrade and make the basic data widely available.

Hopefully we will get more, and mo' betta', data on the Losmandy yahoo group in the coming weeks and months as additional people opt in to the upgrade. With article available and accessible without being a member of astromart, I am hopeful that if anyone here knows someone considering the purchase of a mount, that they will inquire into whether this alternative is suitable.

regards
Greg N

The thread on snacking made me think....well...here goes. You're out in the wild at night observing & there are beasts.

1. Some people carry guns
2. Some people hope it all works out anyhow
3. Some people keep their car horn emergency beepers handy
4. Some people play music to scare away animals

Here's what I think. I think the most effective thing to do would be to drink a lot of fluid and in due course mark the observing territory N, S, E, and W.

Beasts understand that, even big ones.

There, I've said it.

regards
Greg N

WSJ article on splurging on special items. Astronomy buffs will draw the appropriate conclusions. Greg N

July 7, 2008, 12:11 pm
Splurging Is Good for Your Health

Buying overpriced indulgences may feel good in the short term, but you pay the price later. Or at least that’s the conventional wisdom.

But a study by a couple of business-school professors says splurging now makes you happier later. Even more surprising: Not splurging now gives you pangs of regret later.

Gucci shopper

Anat Keinan, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School, and Ran Kivetz, a professor of marketing at Columbia Business School, make their case for the vice lifestyle in an article in the Harvard Business Review.

One of their studies polled college students and alumni on the subject of spring breaks. Regret about not having spent more money or traveling during breaks increased with time, whereas regret about not having worked, studied, or saved money during breaks decreased with time.

The authors write: “We saw a similar pattern in a study of how businesspeople perceived past choices between work and pleasure. Over time, those who had indulged felt less and less guilty about their choices, whereas those who had been dutiful experienced a growing sense of having missed out on the pleasures of life.” (As the old saying goes, nobody dies saying “I wish I’d spent more time at the office.”)

The authors also did a study of mall shoppers, asking about their regret about buying an expensive item of clothing. Those who anticipated short-term regret bought less-expensive items, while those who anticipated long-term regret splurged. “Thinking about short-term regret drives consumers to be virtuous, while thinking about long-term regret leads them to be extravagant,” the authors write.

Luxury-goods makers, of course, will eat this up. I can see the slogan now: “Luxury: It’s Good for Life.” Or “Cartier: You’ll be sorry you didn’t.” Whether luxury is good for your finances is another matter. (Nobody goes bankrupt saying “I wish I’d spent more on Gucci bags).

Wealth Report readers, what do you think? Do the long-term benefits of indulgence outweigh the short-term risks of regret?

This eye bolt is a part of my new car roof rack carrier; the connection to astronomy is, this is how I carry the camping stuff while the scope goes in the car!

What I would like ideally is this same setup in stainless steel. The carrier tie down ropes go through this and I'd prefer not to go with plastic. The shaft is 1/2 inch long, 1/4-20. The spring nut must be no wider than 7/8th. Length of the spring nut doesn't matter so much as I have a lot of room lengthwise. I do need a flat wide head so that it makes a nice flat contact with the channel aluminum in which this part can slide around.

I haven't really been able to meet these dimension on McMaster-Carr. Since y'all smarter than me I thought I'd throw myself on your mercy.

thanks
Greg N

...the weather.

The great equalizer.

greg n

http://icehome.in.cnr.it/icefalls/Losmandy.htm

As I mentioned in my article posted here we have some other members pursuing the Ovision upgrade.

I'm afraid I'm not qualified to comment on all the details of the data in this link but people wishing to pursue the discussion may join free at Yahoo! Losmandy_users.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/losmandy_users

(make sure you say something intelligent about Losmandy's when prompted for a comment or you'll get zapped by me or the moderators--we keep the group spam free)

It's not quite as tight as the results I got on my G11 but Gimmi (the guy who did the materials above) seems very happy with the results.

regards
Greg N

I have the complete Pentax XW set so I'm not exactly hurting. The main defect of this series is a big gap from 14mm to 20mm.

I seem to feel this gap "more" than other gaps (between 20 and 30mm, and between 30 and 40mm) probably because this is prime real estate magnification wise on my C14: the 20mm is 196, the 14mm is about 280x. That's almost 100x from the 20 to the 14mm. I often feel the need for a halfway point.

Got no REAL complaints but I have filled the gap with the Nagler NT4 17mm. It's a nice piece of glass but it ain't pentax-y.
On planets, shows a bit too much ghosting to my taste.

I'm just wondering if there are any 16 or 17mm options out there that I might like better. I know there's the Nagler 16 but I'm not sure why I'd prefer that to the 17. Otherwise I'm a bit stumped. I've used a couple of Pans and they're OK but I'm not sure what's out there that would sit "nice and comfortable" beween two Pentaxes in a place currently occupied by a 17mm NT4.

I guess it's not REALLY a problem. But when you get used to the feel and style of the XWs it's rather jarring to switch to the TV. Maybe I should just get a little 1.25" 17mm and use it for planets and keep the 17NT4 for deep sky at that magnification, getting, as it were, two eyepieces to take the place of the 17XW that doesn't exist.

regards
Greg N

I have read that kidney beaning occurs as a result of spherical aberration in the exit pupil, especially with regard to wide field eyepieces.

I got my UO HD 18mm today and observed my neighbor's doorbell and saw no kidney beaning.

When I put in the Nagler 17mm T4, that's practically all I could see. The more I tried to find a place where I didn't see it, the more I couldn't. I noticed that to get away from kidney beaning entirely I had to back out so far that it no longer was a wide field eyepiece. Even as I got to "a good spot" I noticed that there was a very slight depression or darkness in the center of the fov that you had to sit real still to notice. It occurred to me that when some people do reviews and talk about "light pass through," they may in fact be talking about marginal kidney beaning that has caused some darkness in teh fov but not enough for them to move their heads and correct.

The XW20 did the best job on the doorbell (this is in the FS128). I could get kidney beaning but I had to really work at it by screwing down the eyecup.

XW14 was a bit more jittery. What I noticed here that surprised me was that when I got a kidney beaning effect it started *from the outside in.* In the 17 NT4, on the other hand, I could get the effect, and often did, from the center out.

I guess with nighttime observing kidney bean won't be as bad because a wider pupil can accommodate more curvature in the exit pupil of the eyepiece? I don't know....

But I did see enough "marginal effects" today that I began to think that the issues of "clarity and transmission" that many of us report with regard to XWs may have more to do with the way the kidney bean is controlled.

regards
Greg N

We have a brilliant director of the local Dudley observatory who has been doing some public outreach that leaves me rather astounded at its cleverness.

Last night my club was invited to set up our scopes at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, just outside the main outside listening area. We had about two dozen scopes set up, mainly on Jupiter. The seeing was stupendous. The scopes were well collimated--thanks in part to Janie's direction of our "Rising Star" program to teach kids astronomy. The GRS was in full display.

Not far off the Philadelphia Philharmonic was playing Debussy's nocturnes, Prokoviev, and finally, Holst's Planets. Charles Dutoit, an international heavyweight, conducting.

It was a real privilege to be part of this event. I have no recollection of a symphonic concert by a major orchestra with an associated astronomical viewing. This was public outreach at its peak. Every scope had dozens of people filing by to get views.

regards
Greg N

I got a bit confused with this and apparently recently ran afoul of the TOS.

So, let's say, as I did, I want to cross list an AstroNOT computer peripheral in the CCD astromart section. One of the ads was removed. So.....

1. does the infraction lie in two ads on the same object?

2. or does the infraction lie in the same-day-posting? That is, what if I had posted the second ad in CCD a day later?

I'm a bit confused. I have seen people with two ads up on the same object in the same section.

thanks
Greg N