Posts Made By: Craig Burlette

Ok so last week my water-softner died on me, bad news, the tank that holds the regeneration material started leaking. I replaced it with a new one for $89 and started thinking. The tank is 8" in diameter and has a usefull length of 36" if the rounded ends were cut off. It is a simple plastic tank that is spirally wound with fiberglass strands and what looks like blue gel-cote. I don't know if once the ends were cut off if the plastic tank liner could be easily removed, but I don't think it would weigh more than 3 or 4 pounds anyway. The texture on the outside could easly be sanded and filled to give a nice smooth finish and painted a different color.
I have this tank available if anyone in the STL area wants it, free. But the nice thing is that at the local water softner company there were several tanks laying around, obveously land-fill awaiting, and in several different daimeters and length's. Anyone up for a little experimentation?

I am looking for the phone number for Novak to purchase a secondary holder, anyone have it?

Thanks
Craig

I have seen some beautiful pictures taken with the Canon 10D and was wondering if anyone was doing similar work with the Nikon D100? Would anyone be willing to compare these two camera's and the D100's potential for astrophotography? Also is anyone using the Canon Digital Rebel? How does the "Pentaprisim" in the finder of the 10D and D100 compare to the flip mirror in the Rebel, do these move when the picture is taken like the flip mirror or are they fixed? Can they be locked up before taking a picture like some of the film SLR's?

A question for the users of the Olympus 10D, are you doing prime focus work or EP projection? Would you consider this a good all-around camera for planetary as well as deep sky photography?

I am looking into possibly having my mirror refigured and would like refrences and links/contacts for those that do such work.

I will be taking delivery of a new window's laptop and was wondering what aplications are available for acquiring images from my Toucam pro, and what programs are available for stacking/processing images.

I have a 10" f5 reflector with an appropriate Baader solar filter in a 4" apeture mask. Would an H-Alpha filter be a good choice for viewing the Venus transet as well as for general solar viewing and solar prominances.

Does anyone know how I can speed up the initial log-in to AM while using AOL? I have given up on it's remembering who I am so I log in each time and it takes forever 3-5 min's to log in. I am using a Dell laptop with window's XP, dialup modem and AOL 9.0. :S

Here's my first attempt at Venus using a 10" f5 reflector, Toucam pro and a polorizing moon filter to reduce brightness. Captured with K3CCD tools and processed with Registax, approx. 65 frames stacked out of 250. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

I recently purchased a Lumicon O3 filter on astromart, it was advertised as a UHC. Does anyone know if Lumicon ever sold filters with no identification on the outside? There is nothing to indicate that it is a Lumicon, or O3/UHC just a blank holder. It could be quit old, but then again I could have been ripped off.

I would post a picture if it would help, but since there is no identifying marks it wouldn't help much. Also the holder seams to match the ones Lumicon uses in design/style.

Thanks in advance.
Craig