Posts Made By: Howard Knytych

Time for you Astromart conservatives to get off your duffs and write your conservative representatives that you're gonna vote 'em out of office if they don't for once listen to the people and fund these programs. They won't listen to us liberals since they know we don't vote for them anyway. It's up to you guys!

Howard K

Grow up, kid... 8)

Everyone,

Thanks for your input. My 18" dob is f/4.5, and I use a paracorr. From what several of you are saying, the performance of the UO 25mm might might be an issue. At $195 though, it has a definte price advantage over the TV Panoptic. The retailer's a pretty good guy who will work with his customers. I think I can talk him into letting me try it out first.

FWIW, on each side of that 25-27mm range, I have a 17mm Nagler and a 32mm Celestron, plus in 1.25" a 26mm Meade and a 32mm TV plossl. So actually I'm in no great hurry to purchase anything.

Dovetail Bar? Isn't that a place in San Francisco near Golden Gate Park?

One little nitpick: You said...

"The technology duplicates the reactions that power the sun, splitting atoms by heating hydrogen gas to 100 million degrees centigrade."

Fusion doesn't split atoms, it combines them to make higher atomic numbered atoms.

Hi Zack,

So many questions come up in reply to your post, particularly if we don't assume anything: First off, do you know if your 8" dob is adjusted (collimated) correctly? That would be critical particularly if it's a fast scope, say f/5 or lower. Next, what size eyepiece are you working with? It would be good to start a search for DSOs with with a wide angle lens. Then once you acquire a target object in a wide angle field, center it and change to higher magnification as desired. How are you focusing? Are you racking the focuser back and forth on both sides of the sharpest view of single stars, and gradually narrowing it down to the sharpest view? How are you going about finding your DSOs? More specifically, how do you know when you're on M42, for example? What kind of finder do you have, and have you made sure to sync up your finder to the scope so they're both pointing at the same place in the sky?

At this point, it doesn't sound like limiting magnitude is your problem. Answer the questions above, and let us know the results.

Good luck,
Howard K

I'll be coming down from Portland with my 18" dob. Looking forward to it!

I'm coordinating the speakers and activities. This year we're featuring Don Machholz, who discovered a certain comet this past year, Dick Pugh, a local meteor expert, Richard Berry, who will speak on the Milky Way in 3-D, and Jane Jones from JPL, who will give us an update on Cassini/Huygens.

All this under our usual 7.0 mag skies!