Space Forum / Amateur Astronomy / March 2004

I recently purchased a 10" Meade SCT OTA used.  The seller wasn't sure what
mirror coatings it had as I obtained it from a friend of a friend who wasn't
into astronomy.  Browsing through Meade's on-line scope manual, it looks to
me like all of their SCTs come with EMC coatings as ...

My current "travel scope" is a pair of Barska 15x70 binoculars on a
Velbon camera tripod. Over Christmas I had a chance to try them out in
this role at Forster on the NSW North Coast, Australia.
Apart from the mozzies, don't you love relative comfort of observing

Hi everyone, I'm very new to solar observing. I've a PST on order &
I've few questions regarding these dedicated solar telescope.
1. How long can the scope 'bath' under the sun or, how long each
observing session should be restricted to? Will the filter crack if

Does anyone know of a good ray tracing program for Linux. Failing that, has
anyone tried running Oslo or Zemax under Wine?
Llanzlan.

Ok I looked in two dictionary and could not find "Messier Objects".
Would one of you kind astronomers give a layman's definition to me.
Thanks in advance Mark F.

Heya,
    I have a roll of 100 speed film that I exposed at the Grand
Canyon under partial moon light
(http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/gif/moons/m278.gif) and clear skies.  My

Just updated my website with the latest observations
of Jupiter,Saturn and Venus:
http://planets.lamost.org/EPlanets2003.htm
Clear and Steady skies,

Anyone know of a good place to find some graphics of where NEAT and
LNEAR will be in the sky during late April and May?
I need them for our club's publication. I'll give full credit where
applicable.

I'm surprised to find there have been no comments (yet) on the
folded Herschelian reflector as described on pages 132-135 of the
March 2004 SKY & TELESCOPE.
The design is fascinating, and it incorporates an f/25 mirror!

I know, we don't have to choose, but if you could only have
one kind of eyepiece, for all focal lengths, which would you
pick? We should probably divide the Naglers up according to
their type numbers, 1, 2, 4, etc and consider them as different

I have a 28mm kellner (2") eyepiece and want to know which eyepieces
to buy next so that I can view the planets in more detail, ie larger
image size, more colour etc.
What would the NG suggest?

Okay, so this might sound crazy, however...
If we were to assume that it was possible to cheaply produce exoticly
shaped first surface mirrors, could they be employed as eyepieces?

I added some digital Moon pics to my site of a 9-day-old moon. The
images (shot with Nikon Coolpix) are large (in size and bytes) so
allow a few seconds  to load. You can navigate through the
observing report using hyperlinks. In  the observing report

Anyone have any experience with this Chinese-made Great Polaris clone?  Is
it really sturdy enough to support a C9.25 optical tube well for visual
work???
Thank you.

All
Tonight I setup a poncet table for my dob. It was designed for 30
degrees latitude. My latitude here is aprox 30.31. Anyway after
setting the table up. Leveling it and correcting for 7 degrees of