Stephen Kennedy's Rants

Archive for December, 2006

I have posted some new moon photos to my gallery http://photos.chinookcity.com in the moon album. A couple of are a 2 day old moon and there are some earth shine shots. These were taken Dec 22, 2006 and were the first photos taken through my new Sky Watcher 100ED Telescope.

Also there are some photos taken of the moon Christmas day. These were taken through a new William Optics ZenithStar 66MM SD APO scope I picked up. This looks to be a sweet little portable scope and will be great for wide field imaging and guiding!

Stephen

Posted and article on buying a Digital camera over on my business blog site. If you are interested check out

http://blog.sysguy.com

 

S

I went out very late last night to have a quick peek at the skies before heading off to bed. I usually do this everynight. It was about 3:30 AM and the half moon was high in the sky but I could see what looked like a little star very close to the moon. I went back in grabbed my little quick set up portable scope (A Skywatcher Short Tube 80 MM refractor) and quickly attached it to my photo tripod. Grabbed a diagonal and Vixen 24 – 8mm eyepiece and had a look.

What a beautiful site, it was not a star at all but Saturn. In my wide field view on this little scope I could see the moon surface clearly and then the small rings of Saturn. I spent about 15 minutes zooming in on the moon and then the planet until the clouds started rollig in.

Really wish I could have set up a camera and grabbed an image but that would have taken too long. Still it was a beautiful site to see.

Stephen

Well this is covered in several stories in Astronomy Magazines all over the world at this time of year and I often get asked. With Christmas around the corner, please don’t rush out and buy a scope from one of the big discount retailers! Often these scopes promise huge magnifications and even computerized tracking but don’t buy the hype. Magnifications are theoretical and ability to achieve this your optics have to be perfect, not something you are going to get in bargain store scope. For the same money you can get a decent scope, or better yet for the beginner, an awesome pair of binoculars and a guide book ideal for the beginning astronomer.

So if you are looking for scope be sure to visit my primary dealer Blair of Sky Vue Telescopes in Calgary. He stocks many scopes for all ranges, can get almost anything in and can guide you as the proper scope to buy. You can reach Blair at 403 239-8386 or via email at skyvue at telus dot net.

 Stephen

When I was younger (in my teens) I was (and still am) a big fan of The Who. When they announced that they were coming to Calgary with this tour I bought my tickets right away. It was a great concert and Pete Townshend was amazing, Roger Daltry’s voice is starting to show a little age.

Anyway after the concert they announced that you could purchase CDs and DVDs of the concert via a site called http://www.themusic.com. The next day I logged on. bought the CD and DVD combo and waited. I recieved a shipping notice on the 9th of November and today my package showed up.

The DVD looks great. It is a production DVD and not a DVDR and is professionally edited with exceleent video and sound quality. A nice little souvenir form the show that I was at. Better deal than T-shirt at 55 USD for both + shipping as T-shirts were 40.00 CDN.

Signing off to keep watching!