Posts Made By: Joseph Dudziuk

Hi Everyone,

I guess I'm what would be considered a "lurker" here. I've been reading the posts in this forum for several months now, and find that most of the posts I've read are fascinating and intellectually stimulating. In fact, unless I missed any I'm not aware of, I've read every single post here, for the last few months. Since there was a call for a new topic/thread, I thought this was as good a time as any to make my first post here. 8)

A little background about me and my family; I was raised catholic, went to catholic grammar school and high-school. I always found many of the teachings, in the "religion" classes to be contradictory, and never had my questions answered to my satisfaction. Questions like, if god is "all loving" and "all good", how could he ever be so cruel as to condemn someone to hell? All I ever got back from the priests and nuns was either hemming and hawing, or the standard "we can't know all of god's intentions, and means of accomplishing them". Obviously this didn't fly with me, and along with the intense guilt, and threats of "going to hell", for things that didn't seem to warrant such a punishment, but was still repeatedly used as a/"the" tool of control, drove me away from religion, running and screaming. I still feel the guilt, decades later, when I am in a church for a wedding, funeral, or christening. Whenever the priest(s) talk about bad and evil in their sermons, I feel like they're talking directly to/at me.

My wife was brought up baptist, but her family was looser with the religious reins, and she doesn't really have any terrifying memories and such.

We now have two small children, the older one will be turning four early next year. I was wondering about everyone's opinions on how to introduce her to religion so she can make her own intelligent decisions in the future? I realize there are two extreme roads I can take; 1) Force feed it to them, like was done to me, or 2)Completely shield them from all religion, discussions and otherwise. If I had to choose between just these two, I think I'd go with the latter, until they were old enough, and interested enough, to decide to research it on their own. I would, however, prefer to take a more moderate approach, but am unsure of where to begin.

Currently, my wife occasionally takes them to a local lutheran or episcopal church(not sure exactly), if only to teach them how to behave in such circumstances. I'm sure that eventually they will begin asking how come I never participate, and I'm not certain how to answer that without hurting them in some way. Truthfully, my work schedule interferes much of the time, and other times it's just that I can't be hypocritical and go to church, when I know that, to me, none of it makes any sense, and I don't subscribe to it. How do you explain that to young kids? :S

While I would consider myself, and my wife, both "fence-sitters' so-to-speak, I think my wife actually has more "faith" than I do. What's an acronym for a not necessarily atheistic, fence-sitting agnostic? So do we just continue on the, going to church once in a while, path, and tackle any questions as they come up? What are your thoughts on this( I suppose I should have directed these questions to the fence-sitters and moderates, as I don't feel comfortable with either "extreme").

Thanks,

Joe "the fence-sitting-agnostic"

" Every scientific truth goes through three stages. First, people say it conflicts with the Bible. Next, they say it had been discovered before. Lastly, they say they always believed it"

-Paleontologist Louis Agassiz -from the october 2004 "Discover" magazine.

Hi All,

I have decided to briefly surface from "lurk" mode to pass on some potentially interesting information.

I'm sure most of you/us remember a vehemently vitriolic, and volatile, varmint who was vanquished from A-mart some time back(sorry, the first two "v" adjectives just popped in my head as I thought of him, so I just flowed with it 8) )who went by the initials J.R. :S ?

Well for a while he had been on a diatribe against religious believers, claiming specifically that they were genetically defective, and that we should find a method to "cure them of their affliction"(just for the sake of clarity, I don't feel the same way as he did )


Well......low-and-behold, today I took out my latest(3/26-4/1)copy of "NewScientist", and in the "research news and discovery" section there is a brief about a study done by a team from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, whose findings seem to show that genetic factors may be important in determining the level of religiousness a person exhibits in adulthood.

The study supposedly involved 169-pairs of identical twins, and 104-pairs of fraternal twins. They were all male and in their 30s. They were asked about the frequency with which the family attended religious services, prayed, and discussed religious teachings now, as opposed to when they were growing up.

The religious beliefs of the identical twins remained similar in adulthood, while the fraternal twins exhibited greater differences in religious beliefs as they aged.

One of the team members stated that Maybe, ultimately, we all decide what we're most comfortable with, and it may have more to do with our own make-up than how we were treated when we were adolescents."

So, I'm wondering if that knucklehead(JR) may have actually, inadvertently, had a, somewhat, valid point stuck in among his other inane ramblings and pejoratives? Of course I personally am not convinced by reading a quick synopsis of a single study about which I don't know much. I also don't believe I would call a possible genetic predisposition to religiousness, a "defect in need of a cure". But perhaps it may be a topic worth revisiting? :S

What do you all think?

Sorry, no links, I have a hard-copy
only.



Best regards,

Joe D.....back to lurk mode>>>>>


Disclaimer: I don't believe this was an April fool's joke, but I understand that some folks don't find "NewScientist" magazine to be a credible science journal so take it as you will. :S

Hi All,

Could anyone in-the-know please advise me on which 1¼" ep design/type requires the least amount of in-travel/back-focus for focusing on targets at infinity?

Of the 1¼" eps I currently have; Nagler T-6s, all the 1¼"-only panoptics, couple of radians, Pentax XLs, Vixen LVWs, several Celestron ultimas, axioms and excels, several orthos, various plössls, and various other eps like Siebert standards & ultras, I find that the Nagler T-6s seem to have the least amount of in-travel/back-focus necessary to attain focus.

To satisfy everyone's curiosity, my reason for this inquiry is that I have a custom made adapter, which I bought from someone on AM, for my Apo spotting scope, which allows the use of standard 1¼" eps, and I'm trying to find a line or design of eps that'll allow reaching focus at infinity, as well as close-up targets for nature study.

I haven't had an oportunity to try anything out on the night-sky yet, but have found that when using the T-6s on a brick wall about 100' away, I can reach focus with some focus room, towards infinity focus, still available. Whereas, using eps like the panoptics, radians, and long fl orthos leaves very little focus travel towards infinity. While others; ultimas, axioms, Siebert's, short fl orthos, etc., won't focus on anything further than about 40', or so, away.

I'm sure some of you may think this is a hopeless, foolhardy venture on my part, but the crispness, detail, and total lack of any CA(when looking at the edges of the bricks and a window and it's various sharp-edged components), I could see in that brick wall, using say my 2.5 & 3.5mm T-6s, or my 3 & 4mm radians, approx 176X-110X magnification, was astounding. The tiny flakes of loose paint on the window-sill, and the tiny sand-grains/pebbles in the mortar of the brick, at about 176X made it look like the lunar surface, with shadows and brightly lit peaks. I could even see detail and color variation in the larger individual sand-grains. 8O

If I could just get a few eps under about 7mm fl(the highest power/shortest fl available with the scope's stock zoom ep) to reach focus at infinity, I think the images of the night-sky, moon, and planets, would be incredible.

So, what are some other ep designs, which require significantly less focuser in-travel or back-focus, than most others?

Thanks for any info anyone may be able to provide me. 8)


P.S.- I haven't tried barlows or powermates yet either, that's next!!


Thanks again,

Joe D. 8)

Edit:forgot signature :S

Hi Robert,

My Astele 95 accepts standard SCT accessories, ie., a 2" SCT diagonal.

Hope this helps.

Best regards,

Joe

Hi Bob,

I had measured my Astele 95 a while back, and I believe that it was around 119-120mm outside diameter, as measured with my digital calipers. I haven't been able to find reasonably priced tube-rings for it. I'd checked Orion, ScopeStuff, etc., and the rings they have are a few mm's too small, or 10 or more mm's too big, but I don't want to have to shim too much, so I haven't gotten any yet.

The construction of this scope is substantial, as compared to the Orion maks, and I'd feel much more confident with it in rings. Of course YMMV.

My sample has some significant image-shift, that and the lack of tuberings has actually kept me from using it very much. I plan to put a crayford focuser on it once funds allow. I have had it on a photo tripod, for some daylight testing, and the tripod block seems to hold it quite well, albeit in the mostly horizontal position. I'm not certain how stable it would be above about 35-45 degrees, as it's much bigger and heavier than an Orion 102mm mak.

Best regards,

Joe

Joe,

How do you mount a crayford focuser to these scopes?

Bob


Bob,

I believe several suppliers/manufacturers, Apogee, William Optics(not certain about whether they have one actually), and perhaps several others sell crayfords that are meant to screw onto the visual back of SCTs, just like a diagonal, etc., then you insert your diagonal, ep, ccd, whatever. You get rough, or even fine focus with the scopes main mirror-moving focus, and make adjustments with the crayford to prevent image shift. Some use the crayford for all their fine focusing. I haven't actually used one, but in theory it should help elliminate the image shift problem with my scope(I'm too chicken to open the scope and see if I could minimize it internally).

Supposedly a non-rotating helical focuser like the Borg unit would accomplish the same result, but not everyone likes using helical focusers as they require more hand contact than a knob on a crayford, and feel that this makes focusing more difficult.

It's all really more important for imaging, and as I don't currently have the financial means for astro-imaging, I'm in really no hurry to get one of those yet.

Clear skies,
Joe

Excellent post and observation David,

I guess your assesment may be a good reason for my interest in, and subsequent collection of, knives and swords that I've slowly amassed since I was in grade school. I've never really been able to nail-down a solid reason for my interest whenever someone asks > why? Although I've never really given it any significant amount of thought either.

I was also quite the little pyro until about when I started highschool. 8)

Best regards,

Hi Ivan,

I have an ED80, and must have gotten one of the "bad" stock focusers. Squeaky, excessive play(slop?), and couldn't get everything lined up well enough to produce concentric rings when using a refractor collimating eyepiece(sight-tube?(from ScopeStuff)).

But the optics were quite good, and I didn't want to send it back only to get a unit with a smooth, fault-free focuser, but so-so optics.

So I VERY skeptically ordered a Moonlite CR2(?) dual-speed focuser, using the reasoning that even with almost 400-bux invested in the focuser, my total cost is still under $1K, and I would end up with a pretty sweet scope.

The focuser itself is like a work of art, I'm sure the feather-touch focusers maybe a bit "finer"(I've never had the pleasure of using one of them myself) but after all appropriate adapters and such they are also significantly(to me anyway) more expensive.

One surprise was, with the stock crayford, no matter how many times I fooled around with the mounting screws and did the "wiggle it around-tighten-loosen-wiggle it around-tighten..." I couldn't get the collimation/alignment good enough to my own satisfaction. But with the Moonlite, I just slid it in the tube and seated it firmly against the tube end, and voila, the rings are REAL close to being perfectly concentric. Much better than I could ever get rocking the stock focuser around. They're still ever so slightly out, but not worth fussing with to get it better. The Moonlite is adjustable/collimatable but must be removed from the tube for each adjustment, and I just haven't been willing to bother with it thus far.

And to make sure I just didn't get lucky, I did the unthinkable and removed the focuser completely and reinstalled it, with identical results. One day I may go through the trouble of getting everything as "absolutely perfect" as possible, but being that I have no way of knowing whether or not my $30 collimating ep is itself perfect, it may be a waste of time to bother getting it any better.

One point to consider, is that I believe the ED80 and ED100 have different length drawtubes, while the Moonlite units, AFAIK, come with only one drawtube length, with no option for other lengths. Although I'm sure they could/would be willing to provide a custom length tube if one wanted one.

ED80/100 focuser upgrade is HIGHLY recommended IMHO.

Take care,

Hi Joe,

My 42mm LVW, combined with my C8, is one of my favorite low(ish) power combos. In my C8, I even prefer the LVW to my 40mm Pentax XL, a very fine eyepiece itself.

I also have one of those GSO 42mm Super-Views, and the LVW is magnitudes better than it, even in the f10 C8.

I paid about the same used, as they are selling for on closeout now. If I had the money I'd buy a second one as "back up".

Take care and happy holidays,

Joe D.