Posts Made By: Dale Conrad

On King 5 in Seattle the speaker of the house of representatives said that those of us who refuse to purchase insurance should face prison terms. That should make the libs happy to know that if the house version passes, they will not only get to support my wife while I am in prison; they will also be able to pay for my room, board, and health care while I am a ward of the Federal Government.

You all may find this interesting.

http://www.warwickhughes.com/cool/cool13.htm

Dale

Scott, we have to remember when "Health Insurance" came into general acceptance. During WW-II when wages were controlled by the government, employers started paying for their employees doctor bills leading to insurance as a benefit aimed at increasing the effective pay in excess of the wages set by the government. This benefit was continued, either voluntarily by the employer, or via contract with the unions. Most receipients of company supplied or subsidized insurance are ignorant of the insurance concept as well as the insurance costs being part of their compensation. The compensation aspect hasn't been missed by the politicians as they have been talking about taxing the benefit as income.

Most folks these days figure they need to see a doctor every time they get a runny nose, and God forbid if they have to pay for an office visit.

I must be getting old, when we went to a doc when I was young you had a cut so big you couldn't tape it shut, broke something that needed setting, or had a temperature of 105 or so you couldn't break with chicken soup and asprin; even then you didn't worry too much unless delirium set it. My spelling isn't too good but I think you get my drift.
Dale

Scott,

Inquiring minds require a lack of Political Correctness.

Dale

I picked up a Meade 102ED a while ago that was out of adjustment. The cell collimation was way out of whack and the screws for the radial ED element adjustment were all missing. I picked up an artificial star and went to work. The cell collimation went fine since it is the same as for my old C-8. At about 400x with the artificial star slightly far side focus I noticed what appeared to be bluish green coma cutting through the fresnal rings. I think I found what the radial screw were for! By adjusting the radial screws the bluish green coma went away, at least as near as I could tell. Not being an optician I had no idea if what I was doing was correct or not. Only a clear sky would tell me any more.

I picked up a Televue 8mm Radian a week or so ago and have been anxious to try it out because my 8mm plossel was a pain for my wife to use with glasses.

This evening we were finally able to look around a little bit with the 102ED and the 8mm radian. The moon us unbeleivable. The contrast was fantastic and I could see detail like never before. My wife described the highlights as being diamonds. Needless to say I was very happy. Crater shadows didn't show any false color on either side of focus and in focus I could find no color fringing at all. The moon was at about 45deg elevation and couldn't see any color abnormalities at all, even with some atmospheric turbulance. The next target was Jupiter. The moons looked like tiny sharp disks but the planet itself didn't fare so well. We could make out a couple of the major cloud bands and that was about it. Finally I found some color shifts. Jupiter was about 20 degrees above the horizon and upon accasion the admosphere caused the blue on side red on the other, at least now I knew my eyes hadn't gone mono on me.

The old Meade 102 and the TeleVue 8mm radian eyepiece were both performing very well. Guess I will have to sell something and pick up another radian.

Has anyone used a camera manufacturers tele-extender? I have been thinking of getting the canon 1.4x extender upon occasion with a 100mm f9 scope. Does anyone have experience and what were the results?

Thanks,
Dale

Finally after more than a month we could finally see the night sky. The full moon limited exposures to about 90 secs. The following is a stack of 10 90 sec exposures taken with a modded canon 40D and a Mead 102ED on an older MI-250. This is about a 20x30 minute crop from the full frame.

This is a 1/2000 sec exposure @ 800 with a Canon 40D modified with clear filter. IR/UV filter was used at the end of a Meade 102ED. The saturation was pushed as high as possible with the Canon software.

I was taking, or attempting to take a picture of the flaming star nebula Sunday night. After stacking an hours worth of exposures I detected what I assume is about a magnitude 14 to 15 asteroid. Its' position was really close to RA05:19:38 DEC+34:45:58 and was in that area at 05:38 Dec. 7, 09 GMT. It was moving from CE to slightly north of CW at a rate of about 47 arc sec/hour.

Since the object was well defined in the exposures I don't think is was a comet so I would think it was an asteroid.

Any info would be appreciated. Thanks

Scott,

Generally a conservitive will hang a their goofballs out to dry at the same rate liberals offer their goofballs , praise, re-election, and idol status.

Dale