I apologize if anyone felt chastised by my post. That was not my intent. I do not need to chill out, as I was never warm :-)
I only wanted to nip in the bud any discussion of comet observing which looked likely to form. I was trying to post an informational notice that these things were better discussed elsewhere, and to encourage the good ATM focus we have had so far. I assumed that there was no constructive reason for anyone to want to reply. I see that my efforts were a total failure in that people responding to my post generated a great deal of completely off-topic traffic. Oh well. I should have known.
I think an occasional off topic post is ok, especially if it is important, like a major bright comet discovery. But it should be marked as off topic and people should know, and be instructed, to not respond to it over this list.
Secondly, I am all in favor of a discussion of mounts, periodic error in drive mechanisms, methods to design or modify mounts to reduce periodic error, etc. Pushing glass is not even my main interest in TM, I am more interested in mounts. I hope we have a discussion on periodic error. I hope we do not have a discussion on Super Polaris mounts. (Of course what I am in favor of is unimportant to anyone but me.) I thought that the original post in the Super Polaris thread said mearly:
>does anybody know how many arcseconds is the typical periodic error of
>Vixen/Celestron Super Polaris mount ?
>
>I've just bought one and estimated a p.e. of about 30 arcseconds.
>
>Is it possible that this error is caused by the geared motor or it is only
>due to the wormscrew ?
Which I feel has no ATM content. Even the title of the post, "Periodic error of Super Polaris," has no indication of any ATM content. But upon rereading, I see that it also says at the end:
>In this case may it be reducted with springs that push the wormscrew against
>the gearwheel ?
This last part, about DOING something to improve it, is of course clearly ATM related and it was my mistake to have misread it the first time. I just focused on the what-are-the-characteristics-of-this-product, did-I-buy-a-good-one? aspects that started the message. My apologies.
Feel free to reply to me directly (chuck-grant@llnl.gov) if you have further comments, but please do not post anymore to the list on the subject of off-topicness (until next time). I am sure that very few people want to continue to read them.
As a matter of fact I am sorry that I am even posting this to the list. The irony does not escape me.
Chuck