Posts Made By: Ron Bednar

Hi All,
Always been interested in astronomy but never got into it before this, I'm hooked. Trying to learn what I can, been reading and looking at sites. Really enjoy the interaction here and the remarkable images. Don't have a scope yet, leaning toward an Intes Mak. Got a pair of Barska 15x20's from eBay and a mount from Burgess to learn the sky with.

Make my living doing digital imaging, Photoshop, 3D illustration and animation. Itching to get my feet wet and was wondering if someone out there might be interested in sending me a raw hi res image or images to play with, the larger the better. In return I will send you the finished version at whatever res you want. I have some fractal based compression software that allows the image to be res'd up to practically any size.

Any thoughts on the Nikon CP5700 for astro pics, or would the 4500 be better?

Thanks much.

If the world is broken up into 24 hour blocks, which means anywhere can be 12 hrs ahead or behind at the most. How is it Australia is 18 hrs ahead?

I am sure this has been gone over before but the thought is new to me, so I figured I'd post.
What brings this up is an encounter with a friend. I am new to astronomy and excited about all of it's aspects and eager to share my enthusiasm. I really like the tech part of the hobby, Scopes, CCD imaging, mount periodic error rates and all. My friend is a before dirt techie. Has all the latest celphone, iPod, download stuff, play games, listen to music, video conference gadgets that come out. So I thought he might be interested in whats happening in amateur astronomy.
He wasn't, his comment was, "Why all the bother? Stars and all that have always been there."
And that got me wondering, why do I look to the stars? My friend did a passing glance at the Orion nebula and that was it, off to other things. Interesting to me how some people are awe struck and others couldn't care less.

So now somebody came up a another peeing in the wind idea. People boarding airplanes are going to be given tags to wear defining that person's terror risk! Who thought that one up? And based on what criteria, your credit report, if you subscribe to The Nation, did or didn't try to pass an anti tank weapon through the xray scanner? Geez...
Another giant leap in the war on terror...

If they have or know that much about a given person to tag them as a terror risk, why let them on the plane at all? I can see a plethera of law suites coming over this one. And seems it wasn't that long ago another country made some citizens wear tags identifing them because of their ethnic origin. Are we far behind?

In order to go where man has gone before, 30 years ago, the Hubble is has been retired before it's time. No more shuttle maintainence visits. NASA has decided to let it degrade on it's own and fall into the Pacific. That also means the $200 million worth of upgrades already built and waiting for installation will be junk.

The greatest telescope ever built and one of the most successful scientific programs is finished. But Congress can over ride NASA and insist the Hubble be maintained. I say it's time to write them and let them know it should be kept up.

Well Jay, I can understand your pride and all. I don't want to sound too critical but is $500 Billion worth that small feeling in your chest? Where do suppose that money is going to come from? Your children and my grand children are going to pay for it not GWB. I'd feel alot more pride about taking care of business here for a fraction of that. I say, lets provide some folks(us)with the nessecities of health care, clean air, food and water for starters.

Another fact is that the first 11 billion is coming from NASA's own programs...do you think the next space telescope is going to survive those budget cuts and revenue shift? Not.

Hi,

I am no expert in this mind you...a neophyte actually....but I am curious.
Considering your setup and the fact that you are willing to spend up to 2K for a body.
Why do an DSLR at all? Why not consider the ST-8300C instead?

From what I have seen there are some great images coming from DSLR's but the CCD images are just simply better...no?

Cheers,
RonB