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The ones next to the moohphase icons? There little bits of a satellite picture from the future. The Canadian Meteological Center runs a big computer simulation that predicts cloud cover in canada for up to 48 hours in the future. The calendar on this group automatically links to the right CMC prediction page for the evening of the event date. The little blue icons mark which calendar items are within the 48 hour precdiction range of CMC. If you look closely you'll see that they are slightly different. They are actually little bit of the real forcast image. The wiggly black line is the ottawa river. If you click on the calendar event link, you'll goto a page with event details and a bigger cloud forcast map. The point is that we can use the CMC images to get an idea if its going to be clear on the night of a starparty. Seeing 48 hours into the future is pretty cool, I think. -ad

Check it out! If you visit the Home page for AMASOT and click on the next day or two, you get the calendar report AND a map of the weather in the future. Now "everyone" can have their very own time machines! Check the cloud cover for observing, without having to hit any seperate Environment Canada links. A nice bit of coding, for those in the know. And extremely useful too... Great feature Mr. Danko! Mr. Prevost

Nice pix you uploaded to the files section. Keep it up. We have 20 meg of space to use up. :) -ad

A local astronomy telescope viewing for girl scouts that Janice and I were going to attend will be cancelled due to weather conditions. Snow and wind will make it impossible for us to give a sky tour to about 10 kids and their leaders, in our community. We were going to attend as Janice & Roland, gentle amateur astronomers. Maybe another time! Photons Rule! Roland

It seems the time machine used for predicting cloud cover has gotten mixed up with the time machine used for predicting moon phases. I shall have to pour cold water over both of them. Thanks for pointing that out. Feel free to find more bugs. -ad

Monday Feb.26th/2001 Sess# 276 7:30 - 10:30 Farm Road lm=6.0 s=7 clear -11C Observing session, by myself, to test out Janice's f/5 80mm Short Tube Scope, at a darker site. I used the newly acquired 3x Barlow I got from Matt Weeks, to achieve higher magnification on the planets than previous tries, with this small scope. Venus - Just love venus when it's a very thin crescent like this. It's so much larger at such times. Could not detect any variations in shading on the lit part. Moon - Crescent shaped as well. Darker area showing much detail with earth shine. Small scope pushed to 96X yeilds a decent view after all. Saturn - 2 moons visible, in this small scope. Cassinni division visible, colour detected on sphere, shadow on rings. 120x was best for this one. Jupiter - caught it just when a moon was touching the surface edge on the way to dissapearing behing it, I think. Attractive view, though with much less fine detail in bands than what I'm used to. M81&82 - Ahh, this is where the wide field pays off. I can easily get a 2 or 3 degree field of view. These differing galaxies, one oval and one pencil-shaped, in this wider setting, are most attractive indeed. M65&66 - Same pleasure as the 2 galaxies above. Nice to be able to see them in a wider field of view, in context with stars all around. Could not detect the 3rd nearby, fainter NGC. Gamma Leo - Binary star. Wow, do refractors, even inexpensive ones, ever do a good job on binaries. Two bright little yellowish ball-bearings with much dark between them. NGC2903 - An excellent and bright galaxy in Leo that somehow did not make it onto the Messier list. Easy to find and quite distinct in the f/5 80mm Short Tube. Overall, I'm impressed by how much even a 3" scope can show you. It's finderscope is puny, so the strategy for finding things is completely different than with the SCT8". However, used with a 32mm ep, the short tube itself becomes a super 16x 3 degree F.O.V. findercope of it's own. Pleasant to be under dark skies again. Rol.

Anyone know a web page with good long range weather forecasts for ottawa? If there is one, I'd like to try getting the calendar items to automatically link to the right long term weather forcast. Your cloudy-night coding weenie, -ad

Hi there, I'm new to the region and am anxious to find an astronomy group that isn't into bullshit politics and ego trips... I think i have found the right place! ;>)-- -Ni! Mike the anarchic photon

In response to the Knight who up until recently said "Ni!": When you saw that amazing halo in the daytime, too bad you didn't have one of those chrome hubcaps that people use to take all-sky photos. Given that this rare ring configuration went all the way around the sky, it would have made an amazing photo. Still, I imagine you're not in any danger of forgetting it either. Since I started observing, four years ago, it's interesting to note all the sky events I had never noticed before. Ice fog haloes, fireballs, sundogs, Venus' belt, Zodiacal light, etc... And, on a simpler level, I'll bet that Janice & I have seen 5X more stunning sunsets per year than we had previously. I guess these are just some of the peripheral bonuses that come with regular observing. Almost Any Skies! Rol

This sounds like a fun place - my 3.1 inch Vista & I are in!! For my first official act as a member of this discussion group, I will get me to the nearest Roger's outlet before the moon is next new and retrieve a copy of the Holy Grail. Lady J "My Kingdom for a Horsehead"

So good to see you here, Ricardo of Harding. Well met! And so, with Janice online as well ( welcomed her locally ) , now we are 5! Heck, with numbers like that, we might just be able to muster up an asteroid detection line or something. The sky is not the limit! Rol

Hey Richard, With all that booze you'd be a Knight who said Hic.........right then on to business.......I would like a ....SHRUBBERY!!! Wow a -5 meteor cool I wish I would have stayed up longer, I did however get some pretty good views of Jupiter, which had a really cool dark barge on its NEB, the seeing was'nt good enough to take more than about 300X. Hey Attilla can I upload a whole whack of shrubbery pics??? I think this is a great tonic for all the bs lately ie lots of silliness!! ---Ni ecky ecky vetang

In a similar vein as Mike's MP3, but for persons who might be away from their computers, and might still wish to use their own voices to sing an irreverant Monty tune. http://paul.merton.ox.ac.uk/filmtv/brian.html R. PS - Is this really an amateur astronomy group, or is it: "The Amateur Monty Afficionados Seeking Outrageous Truth?"

Richard, are you pitching for some kind of group photo or what!? Once you've recovered from your group hug, and if you're not too fragile yet, might I ask you for a bit of eyepiece advice? ;-) There's a Pentax 10.5mm for sale used, listed at the following Web site ( that Canada-Wide Astro one ). http://ftp2.ica.net/~pmarkov/2001_mar.htm The seller asks for $350.00 - mint condition. I don't remember the exact details you already gave me, so three questions pop up: In your opinion... 1- Price is reasonable or not? 2- How does the 10.5 do on planets - were you saying Ortho-like? 3- I still have the 10mm Speers-Waller - has comfortable eye relief for me. Ignoring the eye relief, is Pentax 10.5 substantially better? ( you've had both ). Have a good weekend and say hello to Judith... Photonically, Rol

Richard Sent me the following really helpful message, then asked me to post it so that "Attilla can rag" him. Looks like it's open season, Attilla! ;-) And thanks very much for the advice Richard! Richard Wrote:... Hi Roland!! Your question is complex. I will try and sort out the various elements. Price...I paid $378.00 Can at my door (cost of eyepiece+ shipping +taxes). A good eyepiece (pentax, televue, tak etc.) should be about 80% of new ie. .8 x 378 = $302. So no, $350 is not a good price. Offer $320 delivered. However, the eyepiece is overpriced if bought in Canada - $475 new, so I assume the sellor paid the high Canadian price. If you are looking for an excellent planetary eyepiece only (and this is important...we are talking about planetary only) the contenders are ALL orthos and Taks (a modified ortho). The argument is usually between Pentax orthos (.965 format only and discontinued), Zeiss orthos (I think discontinued) and Tak LEs (Mike has two of these and they are sharp, but eye relief and field are small). These are all premium eyepieces in the same price range as the Pentax XLs (a Tak will run you $30 US less). But remember, the wide field you have in the Speers will not be there. Speers-Waler vs. Pentax. I must admit that since eye-relief is so important to me, that the tight relief of the Speers cause me not to enjoy the full field. As to contrast, I think that the speers is good but not in the class of the Pentax which uses ED glass and I think that this is the reason for the incredible contrast and colour rendering for these multiple lens eyepieces. Apparently, the Pentax have a far superior edge correction compared to the Speers. While this is important for fast scopes, I don't have a fast telescope. I think we should go to Mike's and compare our 2 eyepieces in his scopes...you WILL see the difference. Howvever this is a moot point since the used eyepiece will be gone (they sell quickly used). I think when you are paying this kind of money, you will want an eyepiece that: 1. has good edge correction should you ever get a fast scope ;o) 2. holds its value (such as the pentax) 3. has the maximum field for the magnification. In conclusion, I presently have the following eyepieces: 35 Panoptic 25 Plossel (came with scope...not used) 24 Speers-Waler 21 Pentax LX 20 Ultima (would sell but my daughter Catherine loves it) 18 Speers-Waler FOR SALE 17 Vixen LV wide angle (nice 65 deg. eyepiece but not a Nagler!) 14 Speers-Waler (for sale, I ordered a 14 mm. Pentax!!) 10.5 Pentax 7.5 Orion LV (sale pending to Jean Dorais...the image is not as good as the image of the 14 speers with barlow) This is a lot of eyepieces. I could view very well with the 35, 21, 14, and 10.5 along with my 2 x Ultima barlow. What I mean to say is a few HIGH QUALITY eyepieces are worth a stack of lessor eyepieces. BTW...one place where the Speers are superior to the Pentaxes (other than price) is in stray light. The large primary glass of the Pentaxes picks up the light from surrounding bright lights when viewing at Chapters. Your eye glued to the Speers prevents this. My two cents worth!! Ricardo

Photon man wrote about buying a used 10.5mm Pentax XL for cdn$350. >1- Price is reasonable or not? Hmm. Efstonscience in toronto lists the 10.5mm Pentax at cdn$449.00. Eagle Optics sells it for us$238 (about cdn$424 plus shipping). I'd say $350 is a so-so price. > 2- How does the 10.5 do on planets - were you saying Ortho-like? > If you want the very best planetary view, you would probably be better off with a narrow-field eyepice with less glass. Good choices are University Optics Orthos, Televue Plossls and Celestron Ultimas (modified plossls). The best bang for the buck in that list is probably the University orthos. If you like used eyepieces (assuming you can find one) the 10.5mm Meade Research Grade ortho from the late 70s is one of the best. If you want a modern eyepice and if money is no object, consider Takahasi and Zeiss. The advantage of those two is that Mike will soon have enough of them for us to have a really good eyepice comparison party at his place. :) (Right?) > 3- I still have the 10mm Speers-Waller - has comfortable eye relief > for me. Ignoring the eye relief, is Pentax 10.5 substantially better? Hard to tell without an A-B comparison. Juding by what I have read, I would guess "probably". But the real question is "is it worth the extra money to you". Given the absence of empirical data to work with hmm.... The 10mm Speers is a good eyepice. From what I read, the 10.5mm Pentax XL is very good. Some people prefer the pentax 10.5mm to a 9mm Nagler (high praise indeed). The best advice would be to look through both (which I have not done). However here are a few web links from people who have at least looked through the 10.5mm pentax: Short review of Pentax 7mm XL hidden here: (search for "pentax"): http://www.scopereviews.com/page3b.html A comparison of pentax 7mm xl with others. http://www.cloudynights.com/eyepieces/7mm.htm A really big personal review of many eyepices with several references to 10.5mm Pentax XL.(search for "pentax"): http://www.cloudynights.com/eyepieces/Magnum%20Opus.htm 13 people rated the 10.5 mm Pentax XL as a 9.85 out of 10 with a 0.35 standard deviation (search for "SMC XL 10.5mm"): http://www.scopereviews.com/page3b.html In your circumstances, I'd probably keep the Speers and get a super-high quality planetary eyepice to compliment it. May billion (or zero) year-old photons saturate your retinas, -ad

Geez this group is busier than you know what other group! It maketh me chuckle! -Anyhow Attilla's and Richards responses were so thorough that I have little else to add except that my experience with the Speers is that they are a good middle of the road quality ep that does well in a slow scope (not too good in a fast dob though), but can't compare with the Pentax in terms of quality. Zeiss- yes they are the penultimate ep in terms of quality, the Germans spare no expense in making the best of the best. The Zeiss eps I'm getting are 54 deg AFOV which is not too bad, they come in 25,16,10mm sizes and are only slightly more expensive than the Tak el eps. The Canadian distributer is Maison Astronomie, through the German dealer Markus Ludes. Heres his website it has a lot of rare, and unusual eps: http://www.apm-telescopes.de/ Some of the better ones are the Nikons,and from what i hear the ultrscan ep. Zeiss also makes a 90 deg ep but its expensive and has not enough in focus on fast scopes. So we'll have to do some comparsons at my place when the weathers a little warmer and hands don't freeze from handling eps! I have to run, I have to start marinating some Tandoori chicken (sorry to tease you Richard but there will be other times!). I know Rol I told you and Janice that I'm making butter chicken but the recipe Tandoori so its doubley rich! --Nigel hyphen hypen incubator jones-wirths (Silly Party candidate)

Sess. #277 9:45-11:00 Mike Wirths' lm=5.5 s=5 Moon near Full Clear Skies -4C A bit Windy, but not in the observatory... ;-) A most excellent dinner at Mike's home with the much reknowned Butter Tandoori Chiken and most tasty ever lentil recipe. Janice, Ingrid, Attilla and myself were Pam and Mike's lucky guests. Many thanks to them for such a feast, and the warm hospitality as well. An observing session began later in the evening, with Mike, Attilla & myself attending. ( Janice had not brought observing garb. ) We observed with Mike's 'smaller' 18" scope. Moon, just past full, reduced limiting magnitude to maybe 5.5 Moon 1: A very attractive target that we returbed to a few times in the evening. Most striking was Tycho's rays - they seemed about twice as detailed as I had seen them thus far. Each ray seemed to have small thin filaments. Jupiter: Was getting low and so was barely above the northern edge of the pulled out observatory roof. Unfortunately, the seeing was only passable. It just so happens a moon was emerging and a shadow transit was in progress with the inky dark shadow located in the middle on of a belt. Bino-viewers, sporting a couple of Zeiss lenses I believe, were added by Attilla - you see so much more with 2 eyes. Moon 2: This time we looked at many features on the moon at approx. 200x The most striking thing for me was to notice how the usually smooth grey mare areas were peppered with literally hundreds of tiny craterlets. Rich details, and some hits of coloration - blue-grey vs. brown-gray vs. white, etc. Messier A & B Craters with their con-trail like ejecta was another favourite of mine. Aristarcus was extremely bright white. We also looked at the crater Petavius, which was well placed for us to see the prominent single radial line within it. I'll upload and old sketch file called Petavius.gif to the sketches directory on this group. Night vision was quite impaired after observing the moon. Castor - binary - kind of yellowish to my moon-blasted eyes, but more accurately whitish-blue to Attilla. Sep 4.0" & whitish blue says the manual. Gamma Leonis - binary - Sep 4.4" - these actually were yellowish. Tube currents were noticed when stars placed out of focus. This was due to the lowering temperature outside. Polaris - binary - Sep 18.4 Yellowish primary and whitish-grey secondary. Mizar - binary - since we were dooing doubles without any maps, it needed a visit. Sep 14.4" - the 18" scope was definitely overkill for this one. Still, quite attractive. Epsilon Bootis - binary - Sep 2.8" & a bit of colour constrast ( yellow - blue-green ). Two magnitude difference between them makes them more attractive to my eye. Muchos Gratias, Amigos! Roland Prevost( aka Photon Man ) PS- B.T.W., Attilla, who was that author you mentioned the other time, you know, regarding Photons and interesting scientific theories thereof?

Hi Richard, Never used a UO binoviewer but this is what Todd Gross says about them: 1. Microscope-head style binoviewers (Celestron-Orion -University Optics): Adapted from Microscope heads, small prisms with limited clear aperture, 45 degree angle rather than straight through or 90 degree angle. Most will plug right into a 1.25" star diagonal, some like Orion's screw right onto the back of a Schmidt - Cassegrain scope. You can adapt Celestron's binoviewer to fit onto a schmidt-cassegrain like that using their standard visual back. The disadvantage of this binoviewer is that you cannot easily use eyepieces much over 18 or 20mm before you will see significant vignetting. The general light throughput is also not quite as good, and the 45 degree angle can be somewhat distracting. You cannot easily use these at all on reflectors. The other major disadvantage is the problem with focus shift as you adjust the two eyepieces (push-pull) for the different distances required for different sets of eyes. In fact, even with just ONE user, you sometimes have to change this interpupilary distance to accommodate different sets of eyepieces, and here again you will need to refocus every step of the way as you adjust the width between the eyepieces. The advantage of this style is the price, they tend to run around $500-$600 or so new, and a bit less second hand. (Orion's list is $649) They come in and out of availability and when I checked several months ago, the Celestron unit was not available, the Orion unit was. The other advantage is that on the Moon and planets at high power, you seem to be able to get as good performance, or just about anyway, as the more expensive units. Like all binoviewers, it takes a lot of focus travel to be able to accommodate them, see further down in this article for details.

questions, but enough to know that it will probably lead to a hassle at the eyepiece. I have enough problem with focus shift on the C-8 without adding more problems with these binoviewers! I know that Todd may think that $500 to $600 is a bargain, but this is the price of a 31 Nagler!! I think I'll pass and buy the Crayford focuser for my C-8 to take the mirror shift out of the formula instead ;o) A binoviewer should not make focus shift on an SCT any worse. However, it might encourage you to use higher powers which does make focus shift more annoying. However, aftermarket C8 focusers should be reasonably cheap. Years ago Tuthill sold a rack and pinion focuser for C8s that also eliminated focus shift. But I think you want all three: the N31, binoviewer and focuser. You just have to decide what order you want them in. Ah, the joy of toys. -ad ps. Mike is still winning. Time to catch up guys!