Xilman

That brings back distant memories. You weren't a member of OUAS were you? Jaffa Cakes were a society tradition.

While we're on the CN-bashing wagon: one of the things that drive me away from there for months at a time is the attitude and actions of some of the CN moderators. They appear to be jobs-worth sticklers for the letter of the rules with no imagination or flexibility. Some mods are good people and I know that they are also dismayed by the actions of some of their colleagues. What is very different about SGL is that the mods are almost always invisible, except when asked for assistance --- when help is usually prompt and plentiful. In general, I participate in SGL because it feels like a friendly club. Somewhere to learn from others, to help others to learn, to see what others are doing and to boast about ones own achievements, and just to gossip on occasion. Paul (yet another one. We seem to have a Paul infestation in these parts and may have to start putting down traps.)

Look up "Grandi's Series" on Wikipedia and follow the "See Also" links. Lots of good fun there. In particular, 1+2+3+4+.. = -1/12. With a little ingenuity it is possible to make a divergent series sum to any value you wish.

Counting Pleiades? Test of acuity as well as sensitivity.

Bahtinov masks work extremely well, IME. even when the scope is very far out of focus. A single adjustment, whether toward or away from focus doesn't matter, and it is clear which way to make other adjustments. I find mine invaluable.

Well, it fooled me. I thought you were angling for the post of SGL gonnagle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nac_Mac_Feegle#The_Clan_Gonnagle ) but, to be brutally honest, you failed miserably to make the grade. The lines were far too short, by and large, they almost scanned and had nowhere enough non sequiturs. Perhaps I should try to take on that role. Vid. sub. A couple of weeks ago I had friends round to celebrate Scotland's greatest bard. I made cock-a-leekie soup, haggis, neeps and tatties and provided far too much whisky. (The special stuff is unobtainable in La Palma, as are neeps, so they had to be smuggled in.) Scottish pudding (tartan custard) was foregone because I'd made far too much of the first two courses. The amateur watchers of the sky, they do tell me, Look with awe on the silv'ry Andromeda Galaxy. ...

I regard "astrophotographer" as a subset of "imager". To me an astrophotgrapher is someone who takes images primarily for their aesthetic appeal. They are artists first and foremost, but could well be scientists at the same time. For my part, I very rarely take pretty pictures but have a collection of well in excess of 30K images, the vast majority of which do not look at all pretty. They exist because they are measurable. Whether a DSLR on a tripod is used or not is irrelevant. If it is taking images for aesthetic reasons it is being done by an astrophotographer.

I would say so, and claim to have done it. Sometimes I seek things out and/or try to understand and/or recognize and/or pay close attention to what I am looking at. Sometimes I just watch the stars drift by because I find it a pleasant experience. Again, the difference between seeing and observing.

I suggest that reporting observations is also important, though perhaps not strictly necessary. Quite a bit of science in the past has been published posthumously. Turning to boasting now: rather a few of my photometric results now reside in the BAAVSS and AAVSO databases. Along with those of thousands of other astronomers, I hasten to add - I'm nothing special in that respect and other SGL contributors can say the same, I know at least one has partaken in this thread. I am also co-author of a paper in MNRAS but that was for purely desk- and computer-based work. I think of myself as a scientist. YMMV.

The paleontologist often wrongly guesses important characteristics. Compare the Jurassic Park dinosaurs with the many species which we now know had feathers. The astronomer can make pretty good guesses for many things - a red dwarf will look the same in 65 My as it does now - but doesn't have a clue for some others - what will Betelgeuse look like in only 65 ky?

You can call me anything you like as long as you call me in time for dinner.

Been browsing your thesaurus again Jeremy?

What do you want to do? Pretty pictures or photometry? The answer may differ.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrology: Metrology is the scientific study of measurement. Nuff said.

Our peers?

An almost textbook illustration of the difference between seeing and observing. In audio, this would be hearing and listening.

Oi! What have you got against us wot do astrometry as well as photometry? We track asteroids you know, something which may well save your neck one day. 😄 To be serious: even the pretty picture brigade are well capable of doing real science. Typing "HOYS" into a search engine may prove enlightening.

Yes. Think about it. Point a very wide-angle lens at the celestial equator. Wait. Those star with positive and negative declination will circle their respective celestial poles.

If I had 2 megabucks to spare, I would definitely spend half of it on the 1m Planewave and the other half on cameras, filters, spectrographs, computers, software, housing, etc to be able to make good use of it. Even cameras don't come cheap when you would like to have >= 50mm diameter imaging area. It would fit on the land still available here.

I have two 6" (150mm) refractors that don't get used any more They are a pair of Fujinon 25x150 binoculars, mil-spec and originally used for coastal surveillance. An equatorial mount was built for them but that took a bit of damage (a bearing popped out and lost its balls) in the last house move. Perhaps I should try selling them on but have absolutely no clue as to a fair price.

When you do, let me know. I plan to let out part of my place here to visitors but there is a lot of bureaucracy to overcome first. Before buying Tacande Observatory, SWMBO and I stayed in a rather nice place in Puntagorda a couple of times. The bad wildfire of last year came right up to the edge of that villa but no further, so it is still in business AFAIK. The altitude sounds about right, so perhaps it was the same place.

Shame I didn't know you were coming over because I arrived back in LP on 11 January and we could have met up. The lights of Los LLanos are visible (they shouldn't be, some people are breaking the law) and my house & observatory is hidden by the small peak to the left of Los Llanos. Note also the colour and the unusual brightness of the sky to the south, Bortle 8/9 perhaps --- the orange Na glow in particular. We have been plagued by calima (translates as "dust") which blows in from the Sahara. A calima generally brings hot weather (it reached 26C towards the end of January here in El Paso, when 18C is more typical) and rather poor visibility. El Roque is above the inversion layer and so doesn't suffer too much but where I am is 760m above sea level and sometimes the naked eye limiting magnitude is around +1. When only two stars in Orion, Rigel and Betelgeuse, are visible to the naked eye, there's no point in trying to observe anything.

Rock of the boys. The boys in question are several pinnacles of rock, now sadly eroded by tourists taking souvenirs. Roque also means "rook" in the context of the game of chess.

Do you collect artifacts? If so, they are undoubtedly valuable. Otherwise, YMMV. I make good use of both bits and atoms. There are a number of ways in which physical representations are more useful in practice than their virtual counterparts. Horses for courses.

Have you read The Road to Reality yet? Damned fine book, IMO, but can be heavy going after a little while. If you like that one, you will probably enjoy Gravitation by Misner, Thorne & Wheeler - almost universally known as MTW. Nice pictures and helpfully split into an introductory and an advanced track, the latter of which can be safely skipped.