-- BEGIN included message
- To: "Thomas O'Hara, PhD" <ohara@azstarnet.com>
- Subject: Re: ATM The Ultimate Scope? Or Scopes? [Longish]
- From: Dave Sopchak <das@po.cwru.edu>
- Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1999 21:28:13 -0500
- In-Reply-To: <36929CD2.6F4BDC67@azstarnet.com>
- References: <01DA09A02D27D211BB1F00805F31E051991E08@xch-knt-09.ds.boeing.com><36927620.39A8090A@companionsystems.com>
tom, Nice post! Rock on! I guess I'm following your advice- my first scope a 6" f/9, great for planetary... redid my 10" store bought mirror to make an airline travel scope, made an 18.5" f/4.8 light bucket, and now working on a couple of 6" f/4 mirrors for two hiking scopes. My goal: under 5 pounds each. I will say though, that when the atmosphere cooperates, with the progression of 6" to 10" to 18.5" scope, planetary detail also increases... Don't know if I'll ever do Everest, but Denali is on my agenda within the next 5 years, while I'm still young enough! Take care and your post was an excellent and entertaining use of the list's bandwidth! ...oh yeah, before I forget- in an earlier post, you mentioned the gvt's use of technology for dual purposes- too true! My bro works for a firm called adaptive optics associates and I had the pleasure to visit him at work for a day and snoop around. Got to see a deformable mirror made of all things, silicon carbide! I joked with the people working on it that that's what I use to grind my mirrors with. A lot of their work was started under SDI but much has been declassified and is now used for astronomical research, nice to see things cutting the way of the public once in a while. Also, if you didn't know, the venus orbiter (was it Magellan?) that uses radar to image through the clouds has a gvt spy sattelite sister going around the earth right now, capable of 1 meter surface resolution. They see you when you're sleeping... Oh, well, at least we get to use cool technology we pay for some of the time... Dave ____________________________________________________________________ "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate"
-- END included message