Ags

Another point is horizontal glare makes it harder to see - instead of seeing the illuminated road and pavement, all you can see is the dazzling light itself. So shaded light provide better quality more usable illumination. Lights with shades can also use the shades to reflect the light down (instead of leaking away into outer space) so they are more energy efficient.

I kind of like my Super 25 because it reminds me of the eyepieces I had as a kid.

Have you ever seen a street light with a shade? The street light next to my garden used to shine right in my eyes ruining stargazing. Now it has a shade so it still illuminates the street perfectly well but does not pollute my garden.

What we don't understand is that the petition is about properly shaded street lights, not "no streetlights"? Are you opposed to properly shaded (no glare) streetlights too?

I am finding eyepieces a bit annoying at the moment. You always need one more.

Here in Amsterdam the the night sky is white with light pollution and we have plenty of burglaries. If you can believe our local police, we even have gangs flying in from Peru doing break-ins. Well, before covid anyways.

My partner went for single-focus lenses partly because of the light scatter issue, but also because the op is not an exact science - I don't think they can guarantee the lenses will be exactly right. In our case distance vision was nearly perfect in one eye, but still needed glasses in the other eye.

Not good!

Actually, if i could find a cheap 400-420 mm focal length ED lens group I could convert my ST80 to an STED80! I quite like the ST80 focuser. An interior decorator would call it "honest".

That video is awesome!

Forget upgrading cheap achros with better focusers etc... i would be happy with ED glass in a cheap ST80 OTA!

Any ideas for a tripod that can hold 5 kilos, pack small and costs nothing?

Not sure It is my preferred means of transport to Australia though....

Maybe due to the issue on the way up there wasn’t enough fuel for landing. That was the cause of at least one Falcon 9 landing fail.

Not any more complex then what they do already with Mars landings - heatshields, sequenced parachutes, skycranes, airbags...

It went really well actually. There was a glitch in the very last seconds but it went up correctly, bellyflopped correctly, came back to its landing zone, and executed its landing sequence. It just couldn’t slow down enough. I was worried on the way up, it looked like there was a fire or malfunctioning engine as the the rocket tail was irregular and smokey.

SpaceX like to keep their rocket fuel extra cold, to increase density and pack more fuel in the rocket.

Health and safety, James!

Nothing wrong with the ST80 focuser. I know it’s not fancy but replacing it with anything is probably at the bottom of my wish list. In fact it’s not even on the wish list. Replacing the basic focuser with a gleaming anodized doodad would kill the soul and charm of the telescope 😀

When I was seven or eight, my rocket designs always used the well-proven technology of automotive spark plugs as the ignition subsystem. I should get in touch with Elon and give him some pointers.

It looks pretty rough, like some trainee welders tried to build a battleship.

Haven’t been this excited about a launch since the Falcon Heavy debut. I didn’t enjoy Crew Dragon because it had crew... Really hope Starship comes down in one piece the right way up!

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/fotomate-tripods/fotomate-vt-6006-heavy-duty-2-way-tripod.html I only have one tripod and would like to be able to set up my scopes when imaging with camera lenses. Can this tripod carry an AZ-GTI, light ZWO camera and 100 mm macro lens? Can the Tilt head be used for polar aligning? The alternative I am considering is the SkyWatcher steel tripod for AZ5, but really looking for something compact when stored.

For surgical strikes I have ST80 and C6 dual mounted on a Berlebach Castor (on a Berlebach Report tripod). But I only have the one tripod so I don't do nearly enough surgical strikes! "Need" another tripod...

All this maths reminds me of where I started this thread - how to calculate diffraction effects with simple maths and elementary physics (Huygens-Fresnel Principle). I am sure all this exotic maths is very beautiful, but I do think running a simple computer model where you sum the wavelets is very transparent and easily understood. I think trying to put a number to contrast is just a bit of fun, like devising a way to score renaissance paintings from one to ten. My 6 inch newt had mathematically better contrast than my 4 inch mak, but to my eyes at least the newt stars looked hairy and horrible. Compared to the little mak, the newt was a dreadful instrument for viewing double stars, regardless of its theoretically better contrast and resolution.