Posts Made By: Jim Wayda

I consider myself very lucky in that I received a F7 Stowaway from Astro-Physics last year. It is a wonderful scope that has excellent optics, however, I have always wanted to own the original F4.9 Stowaway due to the shorter physical lenght of the scope. The short lenght of the F4.9 Stowaway make it the ideal travel scope. On the other hand, I understand that the F7 Stowaway performs better than the F4.9 Stowaway.

What is everyone's opinion on these two scopes? Is there anyone that would like to swap their F4.9 for a new F7?

-jim

Please provide options, pros/cons on the Starlight Xpress SXVH9C. I am interested in deep sky but primarily want to image planets.

Thanks,

-jim

I am interested in obtaining a CCD that I will use for the Mars opposition. I have been examining the CCDs that are offered by Starlight Xpress. I have the following expectations:

1. Color (with or without a color wheel)

2. Primary use with be with an Astro-Physics 105 F5.8 and Astro-Physics 130 EDF F6.

3. I would like to be able to use the CCD for Deep Sky, but I am primarily interested in planetary. Therefore, the CCD should also perform adequately on deep sky.

4. I would like for the CCD to have a built-in autoguider.

5. The cost should be less than $2700 including color capability. I just purchased a new home and cannot afford anymore $$$$ at this time. This is probably not reality. :-(

Thanks for the recommendations.

-jim

I recently got a new Toucam and am using it with an Astro-Physics 130 EDF. The output of the camera generates an AVI that I am trying to process and stack with the free program "RegiStax2". The results do not look anything like the wonderful results that was obtained by Brian VanLiew. My images are very low in resolution and contain a lot of noise. Can someone please provide some guidance?

Thanks,

-jim

Could you please take the time to give me some advice regarding two scopes?. I do primarily planetary observation and imaging using a webcam. The scopes are an Astro-Physics 130 EDF F6 and a Celestron 9.25. The Celestron 9.25 has surprisingly good optics. Visually, on some nights the Celestron outperforms the AP, and on other nights the AP outperforms the Celestron. I seem to get better images with the webcam from the Celestron 9.25. Both of these scopes have a very good star test. I know that many of you have done planetary imaging and visual work with both of these scopes and would very much appreciate your opinion.

My ultimate scope is a Teleport 10 inch. It outperforms the AP and the Celestron on Planets and I will never part with it. I also have an AP Traveler but have not tried planetary imaging with it. It seems that the AP 130 provides a step-up in planetary detail when compared to the Traveler.

Thanks in advance for the advice,

-jim

Rolando,

Thses are very good images! What CCD or WEbcam did you use?

Regards,

-jim

Congratualtions.

This is very good fir a first image!!

REgards,

-jim

I have attached an image of Saturn that I took on December 28th, 2003 with a Celestron 9.25 and a Phillips Toucam. My question is:

Why does the Casinni Division seem to be lighter and faded at the front of the planet? I have also noticed this on many other images of Saturn.

Thanks,

-jim

I have abeen imaging Saturn using a Celstron 9.25 and a Toucam. I want to try imaging Saturn with an AP 130, however, the AP 130 only gathers 1/3 as much light as the Celestron 9.25. When imaging Saturn with the Celestron 9.25, I set the gain of the Toucam to minimum using K3CCDtools. I have read that it is not good to "turn up the gain" when imaging with the Toucam. Since the AP 130 gathers only 1/3 the amount of light as the C9.25, I believe that I will need to increase the gain in order to image with the Toucam. I do not want to obtain a smaller image and want the image that I get from the AP 130 to be the same size as the image that I get from the C9.25. Therefore, I will need to use a 5x barlow on the AP 130 and the intensity of the image will be very low. Is this correct thinking? Will increasing the Toucam gain reduce the image quality?

Thanks,

-jim

Is there a possibility that the code requirement will be removed from the requirements to operate on the HF bands? With the advent of the Internet, ham radio needs to drop this antiquated requirement in order to attract new people to the hobby. The alternative is that the FCC will eventually attempt to reclaim the spectrum.

Regards,

-jim