The Warthog

Yep. Unscrew the screws at the end of the tube, drop the mirror out, and drill three new holes about 15mm up the tube, and then line up the mirror cell and put the screws back in. You will have to recollimate, but that's a fact of life with reflectors.

The measurement you made isn't of any use, unfortunately, as you have to measure to the focal plane of the eyepiece, and that isn't so easy to determine and depends on the optics.

Sounds like you do have room to move the miirror up the tube a mite.

If you can bring it to focus with a Barlow in it, then the problem is certainly a lack of inward travel.

I've added my firewall/content filter and desktop to the SGL team. I bet those little green fellahs are starting to sweat with SGL on the case

In anticipation, they want to be discovered. Then they'll all sign contracts with the tabloids to tell their stories, and get Hollywood contracts.

Sorry WH, what's PITA?!?

And what's wrong with .965" eps?

Andrew

If the rest of your kit is 1.25", you have at least to find and fit an adapter everytime you want to use it, and may not be able to use a barlow, although with that short an ep, you may not want to. I would only recommend buying .965" eps to someone who didn't want to spend a lot more, and was stuck with a scope that only used .965 eps. Then I would suggest a couple of decent plossls. There is so much more variety in 1.25" eps.

PITA is a middle eastern flat bread that is delicious with a hot filling.

There's a Pentax XP-3.8mm SMC eyepiece on Astronomy UK just been reduced to £80.

Can't find any info on it. I was wondering if anyone could tell me something about it.

My guessing is it's not a bad deal, as the same one's being sold used in OPT's clearance for over $200.

It is Pentax, after all...

Andrew

Yes, and it is .965". With your kit, it's going to be a PITA, no matter what. If I had £80, and a scope that was restricted to .965 eps, I'd save a little more and buy a decent scope instead.

Not offhand, but I have seen that information somewhere in the pages that are on my machine at home. It's a pretty high number, IIRC.

Oh, I agree, but having SETI on HM's computers would give the mandarins nightmares.

Unfortunately, I have the job of pulling unauthorized software off people's machines at work, and I'm a hanging judge about it, too. I haven't seen or heard of anyone putting SETI on a government machine, though. Her Majesty's Government would not be amused.

Latest word from SETI is that the server will be up and running Tuesday (tomorrow, or today already in the UK ) But that's California time, so about midnight Tuesday for the UK. Things should be returning to normal by Wednesday.

Oh, good.

I just had my main connection to the WAN go down at work today, for three hours. I understand, in some measure, what those guys are going through.

There goes my average!

Same here. I'm going to shut down for the night, something I haven't done in six months.

Since BOINC took over the original command-line version of SETI I've joined two other BOINC projects.

It's kinda fun to say you're boinking on your computer, too. 8)

Every little helps, as they say, maybe if everybody joined up we'd be up there and find the little green men.

Captain Chaos

Hmmm. Maybe they taste good in a nice Bearnaise sauce...

Sorry, just feeling a mite peckish.

Everything returned to normal this afternoon.

Since Jan. 2, I haven't got any new work from SETI, nad the server seems to be not responding to my requests. Anyone else finding this?

If your machine is currently working on project, go to the 'projects' tab in BOINC manager, highlight the project, and click on 'update.' This will force the system to communicate with the seti server and get your preferences all set up, etc. You may have to do this a couple of times, I find. Your machine isn't in constant contact with seti, it only communicates at the end of a project or when you tell it to. That's as much as I've figured out, anyway.

If you just sit and watch task manager then it will take 99% of your processor. But get something else running in the background - or even just wiggle the mouse around on the screen and you'll see the percentage drop.

BOINC is a very low priority program and as such will only use whats left of the processing power, you could set it to only run when the screen saver kicks in - then you know that it won't be running while you're using the PC>

Ant

Hmmm. OK. I set it to use at most 80% of my cycles, and to work between midnight and 7 am. After a while, I realized if I clicked on "run according to preferences" it might do what I asked. It seemed to take four or five days to start doing that, though. I have now changed the preferences again, and it's been several days without any change apparent. I didn't like it running my processor at 100%, 100% of the time, though.

When I configured SETI, I asked it to work between 1AM and 7AM. Instead, it works any time the machine is on, unless I suspend it deliberately. I've been bopping around the help files for advice on how this beast works, but I am not seeing anything that really explains what I am doing, except that I am helping SETI. OK, maybe I wouldn't understand, but it is using 100% of my computer time when it is running.

I'm confused! :?

OK, I finally configured my account. Last February, I ran into a couple of problems with creating it, so with my usual sticktoitiveness, I gave up. SETI wrote me recently to ask me to [removed word] or get off the pot (OK, OK! They didn't really say that!) so I tried again, and was successful this time.

Now I have to leave my computer on at night.

Come to think of it, I saw a "Peter Gunn" a few months ago, made in about 1956, in which Gunn's snitch had about a 60mm frac on the rooftop of his Manhattan apartment. I know that some people do that, even in Manhattan.

Not a film but still... on West Wing, a very pretty lady who works for NASA takes Josh out one night to look through a telescope, I'm pretty sure it was a computerised Meade type dealy, I think they even showed you some views of Mars....

Twas pretty cool

I saw that one. I was about an 11" SCT with goto. I want one of those - it can show you stuff that hasn't risen above the horizon yet!

On the Canadian comedy "Corner Gas" Wanda gets herself a telescope to look for a comet, I believe. It looks like a nice SN8. She puts a diagonal into it, and looks along the tube, instead of into the tube, like everyone else does. Not impossilbe, I suppose, but I've never seen anyone do it.

A lot of yuppies have telescopes in their living rooms, as decoration.

I suppose my WWII German binoculars, although I rarely use them any more. Other than that, my Meade 4.5" from about 1998. I keep the binoculars for sentimental reasons. My dad picked them up in Africa.

I'm trying to load the software, but I have a little technical difficulty. I can't remember my admin password. I'll straighten it out in a few days, I'm sure... :? Alzheimer's runs in my family.

For any new astronomers out there - Don't get too bogged down with the science of the hobby, just get your scope out and explore, the science will come later. Don't let the thought of coodinates, setting circles etc. detract from the enjoyment of just looking at something and going WOW!!!

Greg

Exactly!