Fred Ley

Sportikus, Your best bet is to have a machinist simply make one for you. The machinist can drill and put threads on the piece and you should be in business. -Fred A quick addition: Celestron sells an adapter, Item #93635-A, for the NexStar 4. It is a T-adapter for $31.99 which fits the C90 and the NexStar 4. Is it possible that you are looking for the Celestron Visual Back, Item #93653-A, which threads on the rear of the telescope? It allows one to slide in 1.25-inch items which in turn are held in place by a thumbscrew. It costs $41.99.

Hi Sporticus, Who manufactures the Maksutov that have? You make no reference to the maker. On the C90, for example. there is a converter ring sold by Celestron so that one can thread on the visual back or a two-inch star diagonal. It is called a LAR (Large Adaptor Ring)-provided they have not changed it name. It works just fine on my C90. -Fred

Hi Alexander, You are fortunate that you have access to a dark sky. As those of us that are into this field know, dark skies are being pushed further back on a daily basis. I gather that living on an island doesn't give you that much air pollution too. You should be able to observe many "dim fuzzies" from your location-as you know. Anyhow, have lots of fun observing. -Fred PS-Take a helicopter? -now there's a thought.

Hi Christos, Well, if I could write in Greek, I would make life a bit easier for a lot of people on Astrovox. I can read Greek to some extent and even do a decent translation-but nothing to fancy. Great on translating the article, I am certain that it will help those who have no knowledge of English. I wonder if we will ever witness an impact on Saturn? That would be interesting. -Fred

Just wanted to bring this to everyones attention. It happened in 1994 and it looks like it happened again. There are images at www.spaceweather.com and at this NASA link also... http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/jup-20090720.html -Fred

Here is something that is of real interest... The LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) has obtained images of the areas where the Apollo missions LEM's have landed. The images are very interesting. One can see for themselves by going to http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/multimedia/lroimages/apollosites.html -Fred

Hi, My reply is to the original posting for this thread. I vividly recall, back in 1969, that mention was made in the news media that due to a lack of an atmosphere on the Moon, wires were inserted into the flag in order to give the appearance of waving. -Fred

Has it really been that long since I watched the Apollo 11 Moon Mission on TV? I was twelve at the time and living in Athens. I remember watching it on one of only two TV channels available them. I watched it on YENED, for some reason reception of ERT was not quite clear enough. I kept thinking, then, that with the frequency of the Moon misisons, there would be a lunar settlement by the end of the century. Well that never happened as we can see. Money is busy being hurled in other directions. At least I can dream...and dream...(hey, it don't cost anything) -Fred

Hi Dionisos, Congratulations is in order. Your project turned out well and having an observatory definitely does help, as we all know. Wishing you many clear and stable nights. -Fred

Hey! It looks like everone had a great time-which is what counts. Greatly appreciate the photos since I couldn't attend the event. -Fred

Hi. I have seen many postings on this subject over the years. Looking back at the the whole space program from Project Mercury and leading up to the Apollo 11 mission. I am led to conclude that the achievment of landing on the Moon was reached. The whole space program was comprised of "small steps" that culminated with the lunar landing. A friend of mine in a passing conversation mentioned that he was on station in Hawaii during the Apollo 13 mission. At their station, which was one of many around the planet, they were monitoring the Apollo 13 misison telemetry. He made mention of the exact moment when the gagues went off the chart due to the mishap. Naturally one could say that there was no Apollo 13 on its way to the Moon and that the Apollo 13 mishap was choreographed by the relaying of false telemetry indicating that a mishap took place. It is hard to believe that the whole Apollo program was just a cover up. If so, then the Apollo 8 mission with its footage of the Earth "rising" over the lunar surface was studio made. I recall watching on live TV when Apollo 15 astronaut David Scott dropped the hammer and feather and they both fell in unison to the surface of the Moon-was it done in a studio too?. By the time of Apollo 11 landing, both countries had landed probes on the lunar surface. It sounds like many individuals are stating that the achievment of making that footprint on the lunar surface was just to propagate the merits of the U.S. versus the U.S.S.R. Hey, you never know, but someone may say that NASA placed the Apollo landing sites on the Moon in the future in order to coverup the false Apollo landing claims. Now there's another theory to think about. One can sit here and discuss this subject adnauseam. I guess when we eventually get back to the Moon, we will be able to hopefully view the Apollo landing sites and see if anything is actually there and finally give this question closure. As far as I am concerned... Been There Done That -Fred

Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later. Kodak today announced that it will cease production, after 74 years, of what I perceive to be the best film of all time. For those of you that may not be familiar with it, Kodachrome 64 is a slide film and actually a black and white film where color is added to it during a five step process. I have about 5,000 slides in my collection. Our older family slides going back to the early 1950's still look as if they were taken just a moment ago. The film has good archival qualities from what I see. A friend in California gave me his collection of slides that he took in Greece and Egypt in 1952-1955. The images are just fantastic as they have captured a time that has passed. It is a remarkable film. Just wanted to share this with you all. -Fred

That is nice to know. I found my home in California with Google street view and tons of other places in California too. Now one will be able to recognise a new place in the greater Athens area by looking it up on Google, prior to visiting the place-like a museum, store or restaurant. -Fred

Hi, I once bought a pair of binoculars only to discover that when I looked at Vega, I got two images. I looked at the image with one eye closed and one open and alternated with each eye. Sure enough, the image jumped just as if I were blinking two photographic negatives searching for asteroids, supernova, or Pluto. You could ask someone else to look throught the binoculars to confirm your results. You should be able to return them to the store where you purchased them from for an exchange. Mind you, if you accidantally dropped the binoculars, the prism(s) have probably moved out of alignment. Hope this is of some help -Fred

Hi! I hope that your event goes spectacularly well. It will be a big thrill for those adults and children to look through a telescope for the first time. I hope that you have a good sized turnout for the event. The first time I saw Saturn in early 1971 just blew by socks off, I just couldn't believe it-Wow, what sight! -Fred

Hi, Well I may be the odd person here, but, to me inches, feet, yards, miles, etc. make perfect sense to me. For example, 1/16-inch is 0.0625-inches, and other stuff like that. Even reading temperatures in Fahrenheit makes sense to me. Oh well dudes. -Fred