Posts Made By: Paul Kammueller

>IMO the reason that Kerry lost is simply because the Democrats chose a candidate who was an anti-war activist, while this country was at war.<

This sounds bogus to me. The people I know who voted against Kerry didn't seem to care anything about his anti-Vietnam War past. I can remember when even Republicans didn't think the Vietnam War was a good idea. And you're talking about what was (and still is, to many) considered a very unpopular and misguided war.

>The war trumps all else, even the economy. <

On this we agree to some extent. It was probably the main reason I voted for Kerry though from my point of view his economic policies counted heavily against him. It was his present position on the current war, not his position on Vietnam when he was a kid, that people seemed to care about.

>The election demonstrates that the left's view of the war is not shared by the majority of America. <

The public's position on this war has been as fickle as anything, swinging from highs of 75% to lows of 44%. In the latest poll before the election, the ratio of people in favor of it had rebounded to 52%. That was enough.

This is very unlike me but frankly I'm not against this.

They have to do it. We're too close to the global peak in oil production and the ANWR may buy us a few critical years (especially if people make a bit of an effort to conserve at the same time ha ha) to allow time for fuel cells or electrics or fusion or whatever to come online but we should be devoting more urgent attention to these efforts.

My main environmental beef with this administration is its refusal to pull its head out of the sand about climate change and CO2 emissions. I know that feeds from oil but the issue is not that it's coming from Alaska the issue is how much of it we're burning and venting on a global scale.

Alaska is huge, the % area affected will be small, the oil field will run dry and the ANWR will recover -- this is all just a question of time. And the Alaskans voted for Bush so apparently they're not against it and they're the ones who have to live with it so who am I to say what they can't do in their own state.

Is it true that the off-axis aberration is of an inverse nature? I read or heard that somewhere and was wondering if anyone could confirm or deny it. That is, if you had a wide field eyepiece with the typical edge distortion the positive curvature of the eyepiece and the negative curvature of the gregorian field could actually null each other out to some extent.

Keep in mind it's getting to be winter and temperature can be a factor. A mirror that is not sufficiently cooled off will be somewhat the wrong 'shape'. Since it cools from the edges inwards, temperature differentials can mimic a turned edge, or undercorrection, or zones. The star test is a pretty stiff test, be sure that the scope has been outside for an hour or two before doing it.

>Will anyone make astro-photos that look just like we see it?<

No. Partly because it's not as spectacular. Partly because everyone sees it differently. A newbie and an experienced observer looking through the same scope at the same object will see two very different things.

>I want to read reports of the beautiful objects I can see through light pollution with my cheap 3-1/2" achromat refractor. In reading the forums, I sense there are a lot of people out there in the same boat.<

Deep-sky objects like nebulae and galaxies will never be great under these circumstances, but there's enough change and detail in Jupiter, Saturn, Mars and the Moon to keep city-bound 90mm refractor owner busy and sleep-deprived for years. Even in my midwestern city of St. Paul where the seeing usually stinks. With time, experience and adaptation, you will begin to 'see' detail in these that previously you thought was only showing in the photos.

I'm probably more into screwdrivers and things than knives. Stones were chiseled into shape for many purposes over all those eons and I think as a result the fascination with tools in a more general sense has stuck with guys as well.

Fire is way cool, positively hypnotic. Campfires, fireplace fires, whatever. There's definitely something innate going on there.

A Unitron Schmidt-Cassegrain!?!

Are trying to take us on a snipe hunt or something?

Ditto what everyone else has said here. This scope is way overpriced at $200. You can do much better in the $200-$300 price range at Orion, Anacortes and here on the classifieds.

I've also found that Jupiter often benefits from a neutral-density filter -- maybe the 'darker' barlow has a similar effect: reducing glare, to the benefit of contrast. Jupiter would particularly benefit from this, being a rather bright, white, planet.

>In this age, we now acknowledge that other beliefs also have holidays at this time of year.<

And this has more or less always been the case. It is not coincidence or accident of course, it is after all the time of the Winter Solstice. So the reality is that "Christmas" in one form or another is much older than Christianity itself.

Everything comes back to astronomy. As it should be. 8)