Posts Made By: Maurice Clark

Hi everyone. The college where I work recently purchased a new slide/negative scanner, a Nikonscan 4000. One of the features it has is a routine for removing scratches from images, called ICE cubed. I decided to try it out the other day and was astounded at how good a job it does. Like many people, I used to tell the developed not to cut the negatives when they processed my films, however I found that this resulted in some very badly scratched negatives which were a waste of time to scan. Not so now.

Below is an image of comet Hyukatake. This is a normal scan which shows just how badly the negative is scratched.

Maurice

This was sent to me by a friend in Singapore. I think some A'marters in the US might get a grin or two from it.

Cheers,

Maurice

London:

The train was very crowded, so the soldier walked the length of the train, looking for an empty seat. The only unoccupied seat was directly adjacent to a well-dressed middle-aged French lady and was being used by her little dog.

The war weary soldier asked, "Please, ma'am, may I sit in that seat?"

The French woman looked down her nose at the soldier, sniffed and said, "You Americans. You are such a rude class of people. Can't you see my Little Fifi is using that seat?"

The soldier walked away, determined to find a place to rest, but after another trip down to the end of the train, found himself again facing the woman with the dog.

Again he asked, "Please, lady. May I sit there? I'm very tired."

The French woman wrinkled her nose and snorted, "You Americans! Not only are you rude, you are also arrogant. Imagine!"

The soldier didn't say anything else; he leaned over, picked up the little dog, tossed it out the window of the train and sat down in the empty seat. The woman shrieked and railed, and demanded that someone defend her and chastise the soldier.

An English gentleman sitting across the aisle spoke up, "You know, sir, you Americans do seem to have a penchant for doing the wrong thing. You eat holding the fork in the wrong hand. You drive your autos on the wrong side of the road. And now, sir, you've thrown the wrong bitch out the window."

Hi James,

It is interesting that you should mention the Phillipines. My wife is fillipino and you should hear her and her relatives talk about the US and its invasion of the Phillipines. Although they were greatful to the US for ousting the Spanish, they very quickly came to hate the US as well as they just took over the country as an American colony. Even today, US businesses have special considerations/favouritism in the Phillipines. One of the conditions for fillipino independence! US foreign policy is too strongly controled by the greed of big business. There should be a warning from what happened in the Phillipines for what is happening in Iraq. Did the US really believe that they would be welcomed in Iraq????

Cheers,

Maurice

Hi everyone.

I have a photo posted below, that is proving very tough to process. It is an image of the 'Which's Head nebula'. The nebula is very faintly visible in the centre of the raw image. However the bright background and vignetting are making it very difficult to enhance the nebula. I have been trying to use Photoshop 7 to make a blurred copy of the image and then subtracting it to remove the background and vignetting, but it is not working very well, partly because the nebula covers a fairly large area.

Would anyone be interested in having a go at this image to see what you can come up with? I am sure that not only I, but many others would be interested to hear of ways to clean up this type of photo.

Thanks for any help,

Maurice

Anyone here had experience with the Paramount. I am woundering what is the power supply for the mount. Is it US standard 110V or can it take other power supplies such as the 220V of Europe or the 240V of Australia?

Thanks

Maurice

Try this link for a BBC reporter's account of visiting a captured "police station". No gory pictures, just a very interesting account of what they found.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2908827.stm

Maurice

Not sure if this should be posted here or on the solar system forum. Perhaps we need a "Dark sky" forum! :-)

Last night I had a class out moon observing (yes it was actually clear for once!) and aroud 10.50pm CDT an aurora became active. We watched it for around 30 minutes while it fluctuated in intensity. At times just a glowing arc was visible about 10* up from the northern horizon, and at other times fast moving rays were visible reaching at times to around 40*. The aurora was a strong green colour. The arc was still visible when we packed in around 12.30am.

Our location was in Minnesota at about 44* lat.

Cheers,

Maurice

For the first time in weeks we have a forecast of clear skies and warm weather for the weekend. Why am I not surprised at the moon phase! :-(

Maurice

Hi all,

I was looking for software to use in combining images taken with different scopes. Ron discusses Registar in his book, however I see that it costs $149, whi9ch is rather more than I can justify to the family treasurer.

Anyone know of any cheaper software for registering fits images?

Cheers,

Maurice

LOL!!!