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Hello Stargazers


joe1950

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I am Joe, from the state of New Jersey, the Garden State.

I live in the southern part of NJ, directly across the Delaware river from the Philadelphia PA, my place of birth. I grew up in NJ, very close to the former Edmund Scientific retail store and visited there numerous times as a young person. I'm sure that had a lot to do with my interest in astronomy and telescopes. It was a wonderful place to visit and shop and I wish it were still open.

I am also within driving distance of the Questar location in New Hope, Pa, but have never visited the business.

Of course, Philadelphia has the Franklin Institute Science Museum and Fels Planetarium, and I spent much of my free time there.

I've enjoyed astronomy, telescopes and optics since the 1960s and additionally spend time (and money) as an amateur radio operator (W2DI) and a consumer of popular theoretical physics books and articles as well as those covering electronics.

I'm retired after 47 years, primarily as a graphic artist in the newspaper business - at the same publication. I do have a post retirement part-time job as a school crossing guard. I enjoy that very much and have a few extra beans and pebbles to buy an eyepiece now and again.

My scopes are small and easy to carry outside. I mostly use a Celestron C80ED and a Celestron C-90 Mak. I have a few others that I use, including an ETX-90 made in the mid 90s that has superb optics. We won't speak of the mount except to say it was pre go-to and with some improvements works fairly well.

My sense of humor is rather dry and I try to use it appropriately. For example, I was posting in a forum about re-painting telescope tubes and related my experience doing so. I explained that I sanded the tube and painted it with 'Rustoleum White Appliance Paint,' an epoxy based product. I added that the results were outstanding, save for a little vibration on the 'spin cycle.' :icon_biggrin:  Ironically, a gent from the UK got the humor and replied as such.

I look forward to participating, learning from the experience of others and hope I can add some useful information to help when needed. Thank you, joe.

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Thank you Derek and Laudropb.  Whilst over here it should be humour, Derek!

I've even enlisted the help of a conversion app so I can speak of Kilometres, grams, degrees Celsius and the like.  I take it 'p' is the same as 'mm?'

(I was amazed that some of the eyepieces across the pond here weigh over 200 pounds! Didn't say what they cost though  :hmh:)

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Still prefer British units, I am old school. We have made such a hash of it all in this country. We should never have changed and if we did should have gone the whole way. We still use mph for our speed signage! Although I use metres I still measure in inches, feet and yards in my head. Pounds and ounces, feel on par with killograms for some ridiculous reason. Although I stopped using btu,s in engineering back in the very early 70,s as our examinations changed.

It is better for the people who never used British units in the first place.

So feel free to use what ever you like from my point of view. Hope you enjoy the forum!

Derek

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12 minutes ago, Physopto said:

Still prefer British units, I am old school. We have made such a hash of it all in this country. We should never have changed and if we did should have gone the whole way. We still use mph for our speed signage! Although I use metres I still measure in inches, feet and yards in my head. Pounds and ounces, feel on par with killograms for some ridiculous reason. Although I stopped using btu,s in engineering back in the very early 70,s as our examinations changed.

It is better for the people who never used British units in the first place.

So feel free to use what ever you like from my point of view. Hope you enjoy the forum!

Derek

I'm so old I recall using poundals, foot lb force, dynes, ergs, and the like.  It was a right mish-mash of unit systems!  And how my eyes ached after squinting at a slide rule for hours!

Doug.

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