Dave In Vermont

I've found the latest versions of Adobe are really poor - time-lag in opening, crashing, spending all your time looking for update & downloads, etc. I find Sumatra much better as a reader these days. Take a look if you like:

http://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/free-pdf-reader.html

Good stuff free,

Dave

Very nice shooting there, Reggie. Me likes! Especially fond of your take on Pluto. Seems very few actually take the time to bag that planet.

Here's a reward for your effort:

Best wishes -

Dave

I've bagged those before with my 12" SCT. Uranus and her retinue of Moons are an often overlooked beauty of our local neighborhood. Even in lesser aperture-bearing scopes, Uranus is a beautiful planet.

Good job - John!

Dave

Excellent paper there, Martin. Thank you!

Dave

Don't ask me. The things Terran bio-forms do always confuses me!

evaD

Very well done, Martin! Excellent!

The download went very smoothly - especially considering it's mass - and the extraction and ease of finding things within were and are intuitive - which is great!

A stellar achievement in the gestalt sense.

All the best -

Dave

More like 15 minutes, I think. But there's a way to avoid a problem with typo's and other human blunders: Write your post out on Notepad (or similar) and then proof-read it and alter it to your liking. THEN copy & paste the final product as your post.

That's something I should consider doing as well!

Part-time goof,

Dave

see below

I'd be tempted. A Unitron was what I wanted above all other things for awile when I was about 12 years old. It truly is a historic artifact. I wonder if there's a museum anywhere holding such animals.

On another note, there's a good article in the October 2015 editiion of Astronomy magazine over here in the US. And it has a 4" Unitron as one of the stars.

Thanks for posting, all -

Dave

A truly timeless writing.

Excellent -

Dave

I, too, endorse the TeleVue Barlow in either 2X or 3X format. There are others available that have the ability to seemingly vanish in your optical-pathway. By this I mean that the Barlow doesn't dim or blur the image, which a lesser quality Barlow does in various degrees. This explains why I say the best Barlow's are invisible. I rarely plug TeleVue products as they may be too expensive for many people, and I don't wish to come across as being 'elitist.' But when buying a Barlow, I think it's important to steer people towards the only - or last - Barlow they'll ever need to purchase. Even if this means saving up or hunting for returnable cans & bottles to have enough to afford such.

In terms of should you get the 2X or 3X? All I know is that many people who have both agree the 2X is used far more often than the 3X. So if you can't afford both, then I'd be inclined to opt for getting the 2X first. In my own case - it is true that I rarely employ the 3X, the 2X seeing far more duty. I also love my 2.5X PowerMate, but the PowerMates' are actually a different animal altogether - acting as a Barlow in increasing the magnification, but doing so by a different method than Peter Barlow's design. The PowerMates deserve their own thread to hash out their wonders IMHO.

Enjoy!

Dave

Lordy! I feel a hernia coming on just from looking at that! Wow! But I like it Looks like the Mak that would push me off the fence and force me to buy it!

Nice -

Dave

Very pretty - those old Unitron's! I spent a few years, when I was 11 to 13, drooling over those. Silly me! But they cost as much as a car.

They are still beautiful to me -

Dave

I don't know where to start really. YOU sort it out.....

Yikes!

Dave

To identify satellites up there. here's a good free program:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/previsat/

Also realize the more magnification you use in a scope, the faster objects move across your Field Of View (FOV).

Enjoy,

Dave

Thanks for the warning. I hope it helps people.

What stinkers Sony can be! I hope Dear Leader buys one.

Clear & Noiseless Skies,

Dave

Your collimation paper has been added to my growing collection of how-to guides. Yours is one of the best - congratulations! Most of them leave people's eyes spinning around. You'd think it was instructions for the Manhatten Project.

All the best -

Dave

It's proper designation is: C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy). At least this is what I've loaded into The SkyX, and what is on my Stellarium screen as well. Stellarium loaded this automatically - I did'nt touch it! The Stellarium-team never ceases to amaze me.

Clear Skies & Tails,

Dave

As an inert gas, argon doesn't bond with anything - except with a halogen like fluorine, and then under very controlled conditions. Nitrogen, on the other hand, bonds with many things. Such as hydrogen as NH3 - which is ammonia. But it doesn't bond easily so it's safe to use to replace air for applications that need the oxygen removed. Which one is cheaper? Well nitrogen makes up around 78% of the air we breathe. While argon is present at slightly under 1%. Go figure. But both are readily available and won't disappear.

Clear Skies & Chemically Inert,

Dave

Thank's for the link Dave. I have just book marked this, for further reading, during non observing cloudy nights.

Geoff,

you can download those goodies, too. I have them in my files. Makes for good light reading when I'm bored!   I was a kid who drooled over the old Unitron refractors. Which would have cost me the same as a car (or house in some states) back then for a 6-inch achromat!

Got To Love It!

Dave

If anyone enjoys reading and looking through the old catalogs of Tasco, and many others, you'll get a smile from this:

http://geogdata.csun.edu/~voltaire/classics/

Enjoy!

Dave

When you consider the plethora of satellites, booster-stages, and just plain junk we've put up there, I'm surprised that people don't see things up there everytime they look up.

Clear, but Crowded Skies,

Dave

I like it!

That looks like a great way to recycle things. Good work!

Clear & Dark Skies,

Dave