Getting Ready To Build Our Dream Home



My wife has been irritated with living in what she calls "the fishbowl"--which is to say, we live on a 1/4 acre parcel near my job. She was hoping to get into a more rural setting when we came here, but at the time we moved to Boise, houses weren't selling in Sonoma County, so we had to buy relatively cheap. (I don't dare tell you what I mean by "cheap": the Californians will say, "Was that a down payment?" and most of the rest of the country will say, "That's not cheap!")



Anyway, we are in the process of buying a multiacre parcel with spectacular views. I've learned a lot about site-built vs. manufactured vs. modular housing the last few days--and I think we are going to be having a modular home built in a bit over a year, once our son is close to graduating. (We certainly aren't going to change his school this close to graduation.)



Here's one of the views.

Branching Out



If you know someone with a Losmandy GM-8 telescope mount, you might want to tell them about this little gadget that I have started manufacturing in my garage. The GM-8 mount is an excellent equatorial mount for telescopes up to about 30 pounds--nicely machined, and amazingly enough, still made in the United States (at least, until California decides to seceed from Jesusland).



The only "problem" (in quotes because it isn't really a deficiency, but a missing feature) with the GM-8 mount is that it doesn't come with wheels, so if you want to set up your telescope, you either need to be strong enough to pick up the mount, the tripod, and the telescope (typically about 70 pounds total), or you need to take the telescope off the mount, disconnect the cables, take out the three screws holding the mount to the tripod, then carry each of these parts out to where you are planning to set up. This is typically a 5-10 minute process--perhaps more at the end of your observing session, when it is now dark, cold, and you can't find one of the three screws that holds the mount to the tripod.



So my solution was to put wheels under it--which is a bit harder than it looks--at least, to do it elegantly. Unlike the competing product, which is general purpose, large, heavy, and costs $179.95, what I am making is specific to the GM-8, weighs less than two pounds, and has an introductory price of $40 plus shipping. There are many thousands (perhaps tens of thousands) of Losmandy GM-8 mounts in use, so I am hoping that this can turn into a small money maker. As my son-in-law observed over Thanksgiving, "Why, this could make tens of dollars!" Well, let's hope it's bit more than that.

Humor



It's concerning the announced merger of two major institutions:

Continuing the current trend of large-scale mergers and acquisitions, it was announced today at a press conference that Christmas and Hanukkah will merge. An industry source said that the deal had been in the works for about 1300 years. While details were not available at press time, it is believed that the overhead cost of having twelve days of Christmas and eight days of Hanukkah was becoming prohibitive for both sides. By combining forces, we're told, the world will be able to enjoy consistently high-quality service during the Fifteen Days of Chrismukah, as the new holiday is being called.



Massive layoffs are expected, with lords a-leaping and maids a-milking being the hardest hit. As part of the conditions of the agreement, the letters on the dreydl, currently in Hebrew, will be replaced by Latin, thus becoming unintelligible to a wider audience.



Also, instead of translating to "A great miracle happened there," the message on the dreydl will be the more generic "Miraculous stuff happens." In exchange, it is believed that Jews will be allowed to use Santa Claus and his vast merchandising resources for buying and delivering their gifts.

There's more.

Got To Do This Some Day



Mount Wilson Observatory's 60 inch reflector is available to rent: $450 for half night, and $900 for the full night. The focal length is 24380 mm--so even with a 25mm eyepiece, that's 975x. I would be amused to find out if the viewing conditions will tolerate that. I've read an account by someone who used the 60 inch reflector at 600x power on Saturn and the Moon back in the 1950s. Hmmm. Max group size is 25.



Let's see, if about 10 of us could pick a night, that would be $45 a piece for a half-evening. Of course, coordinating a time might be a struggle.

Humor



A reader told me about a joke out of Playboy:

Why are the Ten Commandments banned in public buildings? Because signs saying THOU SHALT NOT STEAL, THOU SHALT NOT COMMIT ADULTERY, and THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS create a hostile work environment in buildings full of lawyers, judges, and politicians.

Star Party Last Night



The Boise Astronomical Society (like many similar organizations around the United States), puts on educational efforts called "star parties," sometimes associated with schools, sometimes anywhere that we can find a decent place to set up our scopes. These are opportunities to get the general public to look through telescopes, and see the wonders of the night sky. I have done a few of these over the years, and it is always a good opportunity to get people to think about astronomy, and appreciate the beauty of the night sky. I have never done a star party in such frigid weather. It was 28 degrees when I packed up at 10:00 PM.



The event was at the Idaho Botanical Gardens, and we had a nice turnout--about seven telescopes set up, several big sets of binoculars on tripods (including some 30x100mm monsters), and perhaps 75 or more visitors who braved the weather. I took my Photon Instruments 5" refractor with the Aries Chromacor corrector--and it mightily impressed quite a few people. The guy set up next to me had a Televue Genesis, an older apochromatic refractor which is the predecessor to Televue 101. He agreed that the Photon/Chromacor combo was just about color-free--and I could hear a little envy at how little it cost, compared to a Genesis. (The Genesis still has some advantages with respect to weight, length, and astrophotography potential.)



One surprise to me is how many members of the general public are startled by what they can see through a small telescope. The gasp reaction from looking at the Moon at 286x power was quite predictable. I guess most people expect that you need an observatory scale of telescope to get this level of image; perhaps most people are used to looking through the crummy little refractors that places like Wal-Mart and Sears have traditionally sold.



One couple showed up with a Meade 4.5" reflector that they had bought several years ago. They have made little use of it, largely because they didn't have anyone to help them along, and have now joined the BAS. Everyone gathered around to help the newbies. My impression of this Meade telescope was that it isn't a leap up from the crummy little refractors that Wal-Mart sells. The mirror might be just fine, but it uses the Japanese eyepiece standard of 0.965", and the eyepieces that came with it were all Huygens--which is a fine eyepiece design--for the nineteenth century. Huygens eyepieces combine poor eye relief with narrow field of view, as you might expect, since the design is named for the seventeenth century astronomer who came up with it. Oddly enough, the focuser looked like it could be pretty easily converted to accept 1.25" or perhaps even 2" diameter eyepieces, if you had the right parts.



The equatorial mount was also an example of overly aggressive cost-reduction engineering. At first it appeared that the mount had so much slop in it that there was no way to make it work correctly, until I discovered that putting the counterweight shaft and weight on the mount corrected the problem. It's a weird design--but doubtless very cheap.



I get frustrated when companies with good to very good reputations for their serious telescopes, like Meade, sell stuff like this. Telescopes like this are only marginally more than toys, and probably turn 90% of budding amateur astronomers off the hobby.

Humor



Over at IMAO (whose motto is "Unfair. Unbalanced. Unmedicated.") there are some real gems. This single line just drops me into hopeless laughter:

The opposition party doesn't have enough gravitas to be circus clowns.

Then there is a riotously funny demolition of a Walter Schneider who wrote an email to IMAO attacking him for his ignorance--but the letter is full of spelling and grammar errors:

> I assume your joking, nothing here improves your standing or your party's

> standing? (that's a rectorial question)

There's nothing quite as funny as a leftist getting snotty about his intellectual superiority, while demonstrating that he can't spell, he can't punctuate, and he can't figure out how to construct a rhetorical question. (Your, you're, yore, they're all the same to the generation that grew up on television. Or perhaps Mr. Schneider doesn't know the difference between homophones and homophobes, and decided that he better not learn about homophones for fear of being a homophobe.)