Posts Made By: Thomas Holst

Several years ago, I bought my daughter a Canon Rebel XTi DSLR with the standard short zoom lens (18~55, I think). She is now asking me for a longer lens for wildlife and bird shots and I'm looking at the Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS lens. My questions are:

1. Is this lens compatible with the Canon Rebel XTi?

2. Will the Image Stabilization feature on this lens work with the Rebel XTi?

3. Any pro's or con's on this lens?

Thanks for any input.

I've got a friend who lost several thousand bucks worth of personal astro gear to a burglar last night, but he's not a paid Astromarter. Can I post the list for him in the stolen equipment category? He's a university astronomy lab instructor and I know him and his equipment quite well.

BOLO = Be On the Look Out

In the early morning hours of August 9, 2011, the Boise, Idaho home of a close friend of mine was burglarized, resulting in a significant loss of astronomy equipment. The victim is a long time member of my astro club and a long time university astronomy lab adjunct professor, but not a member of Astromart. I wanted to list the stolen items here, both to prevent the sale of stolen equipment on Astromart and to aid in affecting their recovery.

Missing items:

1. 6" Antares achromatic refractor telescope, white OTA, with home made wooden storage case. (see photo)

2. EQ5 German equatorial mount & tripod, black, without battery pack or hand controller. (see photo)

3. Large, flat, tan plastic accessory case, containing:
- A varied selection of TeleVue eyepieces.
- A varied selection of Orion Stratus eyepieces.
- 2" diagonal.
- Several extension tubes.
- A 3.75" diameter convex Cassegrain secondary mirror, used to convert a large, homemade Newtonian scope into a Cassegrain reflector. This is a thick, heavy, semi mushroom shaped piece of glass, custom made, one of a kind.

This incident has been reported to Police. If anyone happens across any of this equipment, either on-line or in person, please notify Boise (Idaho) Police, Astromart management or me privately, as appropriate.

Thanks for any help.

It seems you guys need a real challenge. See if you can identify this car. (And I'm giving you a rather large part of the car to work with.)

Hans P Hafner said:

I like this game as I've always been a car nut...

OK, here's your chance to identify another, although not quite so obscure as the last one. I actually owned one of these back in the 60's and drove it to/from high school. Mine was red, just like this one.

Trying to identify cars from bits and pieces is kinda fun. Let's try another. See photo for the first clue.

Rather than a rare car from the distant past, here's one from the more recent past and they were produced by the millions. Whatizzit?

Well, it finally happened. Now the Taliban is killing people with explosive turbans.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/20/world/asia/afghanistan-violence/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

I'm planning some air travel next month and if anyone gets on the plane wearing a turban, I'm getting off.

Our astro club had two public observing events scheduled for this past Saturday night (Oct. 1), so I accompanied most members to the mountains while a few other members headed for the desert. While I was fighting passing clouds at 6200', our members in the 2500' desert were dealing with much worse observing conditions. A lightning caused wildfire began obscuring the sky shortly before sunset and the accompanying photos, taken by Boise Astronomical Society member Rhonda Weygandt, show the result.

All photos were taken from the Bruneau Dunes State Park Observatory in Southern Idaho. Eventually the flames crossed the park boundaries and the BLM ordered an evacuation of the park. To my knowledge, no one was hurt and the observatory escaped damage.

James DellaPenna said:

Why are the EP Classified pages larger in width than the other forum pages?

James,

I'm not exactly a computer whiz, but I think the problem you are experiencing is most likely caused by your web browser and not the Astromart web site. I use both Netscape and Internet Explorer and occasionally will experience this on Astromart as well as other web sites. It's kinda like the browser has a brain fart and can't figure out how to adjust the page width to my screen size. I don't know how to keep this from happening, but sometimes rebooting my computer will help. Sometimes it just goes away on its own.