Posts Made By: Tony Aguire

I am very concerned about our future.
I am not sure what these guys (Bush & Co) are trying to pull, but right now is probably not the time to start aggrivating things over there. Even if Iran has nefarious porpouses for thier nuke program (which I very highly doubt) we do not have the resources to deal with this militarily. But unfortunately, the military is the only tool this administration cares to use.
What this guy (Peter Pace) is saying makes tons more sense, but like Steve said, the statement will probably be retracted.

Up until recently, I mainly used Astromart as a resource for knowlege, and an occasional sounding board for my political rants. Well, I recently made my first purchase on Amart. I am very pleased with the purchase and would like to support Amart, but having considerable paranoia about using my cc online, i would like to send payment via mail. Can I just send a check/money order to ATWB? or is the online CC the only option? Thanks

It ain't very fast, no heated seats, no navigation system or distronic cruise control, but it has a tachometer and a sweet facory stereo. And at least I wont have to use my Camry to haul stuff any more.

So I got a 2007 Toyota Tacoma as a "birthday present". White, 5 speed (the ONLY STANDARD TRANSMISSION out of 40 or so on the lot :S ) . Not a sports car, but it grows on you. I am going to take it up to the mountains on Tuesday to see how it does with the grades up on the Mogollon Rim. Putting 10 bags of concrete in the Camry for my new pier worked wonders on convincing the wife I NEEDED a new truck .

The most alarming part of this article (to me) is in regards to the oil and gas opportunities that are becoming available thanks to the melting.

People just don't learn...

http://my.earthlink.net/article/top?guid=20070915/46ecaa40_3ca6_15526200709162126633055

Attached is a link to the myspace page for the little guy we rescued 3 weeks ago. He is yet another exmaple of how people don't think before they bring a new puppy into their home. At first we thought we would try to find a home for him once he was healed. However, he has settled in so well that we are likey to keep him.

myspace.com/jdpuppyinaz

Happy New Year to All 8) .


[SIZE="Large"][COLOR="Blue"]"Live long, and prosper"[/COLOR][/SIZE]

Quite some time ago I purchased a used Ultima 8 fork arm setup here on Astromart. As it came with the Byers gears, I was looking for something a little more accurate than the Celestar setup i had. When I installed the tube in the "new" forks, I Used this method to allign the forks.
1) Set the dec to 90 degrees
2) Rotate the tube in r.a. noting the runout as measured at the corrector retaining ring using a dial indicator, especially noting variation parallel to the fork axis. As there is some play in the bolt holes that the bolts go through to attach to the base, it was possible too move the fork arms to adjust for runout. Any variation that I noted 90 degrees of the fork axis (1/4 turn around the tube from the point the fork mounted to the tube) I adjusted the dec to minimize this.
3) Using a dial indicator still, I would then measure the runout on the outside of the corrector cell to compensate for runout that would appear as eccentricity on the dial indicator when rotating the tube in r.a.
4) Continue by trial and error to adjust, attempting to minimize runout as much as possible.I got within about .05 in.
So here are my questions. Is there a more accurate way to do this (allign the forks), and if there are published numbers that specify what would be an accepted variance in alignment. I use digital setting circles (Astromaster) which are pretty accurate but not as accurate as they were when I had this setup on the Celestar mount. I am also looking into getting a better CCD camera for astrophotography (Using the old DSI now, and keep as autoguider) but dont want to put the money into the camera if its not possible to get the mount where it needs to be, or if the misalignment is going to affect the quality of the pics.Though I don't notice any issues with the DSI, I dont go beyond 30 second exposures. Any help/thoughts would be appreciated.

Hello, I am looking to upgrade my camera for astrophotography. So here is the deal. I am using a Celestron Ultima 8, It is used on a pier in my back yard, which is about 30 feet from my house. Currently, I am using a Meade DSI color (the first version), powered by a (rather long in the tooth) 3 year old Dell laptop. I have a Dell desktop which is much more powerfull that I do image processing with. I want to move up, but I am having trouble making up my mind between a DSLR, or a dedicated AstroCCD unit (SBIG etc).
I am getting tired ( with a touch of arthritis)of lugging out the Dell laptop with the associated accessories, and want to move up in the quality of the images I am getting.So I am wondering if a DSLR will be a good upgrade from the DSI,or would I be better off rolling with a dedicated CCD Astro cam (SBIG etc) wich would likely mean getting a new laptop as well. I always like to stay in a reasonable budget (the only >NEW< item I have bought so far for this hobby is the camera and the laptop).If it helps I am primarily intersted in deep sky stuff. 8) I appreciate an input y'all have to offer.

Global Warming, real or not, and if real, the fault of mankind, or not.
This might be an emotional subject for some, especially when some of us have kids/grandkids that will very likely have to deal with what we leave them after we have become wormfood.
We are all (hopefully) rational adults here, so I see no need to attack each other for our own (rightfully) individual views.There is alot of conflicting info out there on the subject, anecdotal info, and data backed by scientific method. Debating the merits of that info/data is part of the scientific process. Attacking each other serves no porpose but to make each other retreat farther into our respective corners, closing our minds to rational (and healthy) debate.Please keep it clean, and family oriented per the T.O.S.

Okay, back in the day we used to put 302's in Mavericks and small block Chevys in Vegas plus millions of other combinations for the "thrill factor 8) " So the reason why I mention this is I have a Celestron Ultima mount with the Byers gear setup. Has anyone ever heard of anybody taking the goods in one mount and installing them in another mount? The idea being taking the best attributes of a couple systems and merging them to create a killer setup for cheap. I understand there would be machine work involved.I like the Byers gears but I am less enthusiastic about the fork/wedge setup. So maybe if I could put the Byers gears on a GEM with decent load characteristis but which came with (origionally) a less than stellar drive....

Thanks for the input