chrisbekas.com

Everyone needs a holiday so I’ve decided to have one… We’re heading off to Cape Otway (just after Apollo Bay) for a couple of weeks of relaxation and dark skies!!! (yes, I am taking my telescope).

If I can find an internet cafe nearby, I shall post some updates, otherwise it’s ’sagionara’ for a fortnight!

Finally, after all this time I managed to launch the parent web site www.redshiftsolutions.com.au. I has taken me a few months, but I believe I got it right now. So the site is up and the blog is operating; what more could a man want?

How about this guy that built and launched of a high altitude balloon, with a payload that runs Linux. The balloon reached an altitude of 80,000 feet, and took some really amazing aerial photos. Maybe I can convince some of my friends to help me build something similar running Notes

Did you ever own or used an Amiga? The Amiga was the most succesfull personal computer of the 80’s and 90’s and if it wasn’t for corporate mess and branding issues it would still be around (in some shape or form).

Well thanks to Cloanto and WinUAE the Amiga can be fully emulated under Windows (plus Linux and many more platforms). That means all those days (maybe years!) I spent playing around, configuring, collecting software, playing games (and the best games they were!) can now be moved across to my Windows PC. Also, not to mention all the work I did at Uni as well - the Amiga got me through it all!

I purchased the Amiga Forever online edition package from Cloanto a few weeks ago (as it is the only way of obtaining legal ROMs for the Amiga) for $29.95 USD. Simple to install and configure, you’re up and running an Amiga in just a few minutes. I’ve recently also discovered Amiga in a Box, a collection of software and settings for UAE that really makes the emulated Amiga shine… and it’s free as well.

A big thank you to my friend John for lending me his Amiga 1200 so I can transfer all my Amiga floppies to the PC (as the PC cannot read Amiga floppy disks). I will give the A1200 back John, I promise!

I had a reply from Mike:

“Mike here: You can do a star test and look for spikes. You could also just look at the mirror from the eyepiece hole; if you see the scratches in the circular view of the correcting lens then they are in the illuminated area. Replacement and subsequent recollimation is not easy; you may be better off contacting Meade. If the scratches are outside the illuminated area of the mirror then you should be OK…”

I did a star test last night using Sirius; I didn’t see any spikes or anything peculiar; the diffraction rings were uniform and consistent when I tested the out-of-focus/in-focus test. I wish I had a higher power eyepiece to test further (a birthday present perhaps?).

It also appears that the scratches are just outside the field-of-view on the flip-mirror, so I guess that means that everything is fine.
At least I’ve learned one thing: never let anyone (expert or not) to put anything in your telescope…

During last night’s star-party down at the Cardinia reserve park in Narre Warren, someone (so called optics expert) was going around testing people’s telescopes for correct collimation (alignment). When he approached me and asked “How’s this one?…”, I replied, “…see for yourself…”. He then proceeded by placing a collimation testing eyepiece whilst mumbling “…I better not put this one too far down…”. To cut it short, he managed to SCRATCH THE FLIP MIRROR of my beloved Meade ETX-90 telescope in two places…

Was I pissed off??? more accurately, I wanted to kill him, right then, on the spot… I should’ve known better… the ETX is perfectly collimated so I should’ve never asked him to have a look in the first place. He also denied the fact that he did it… yeah, right…

I will be contacting Mike Weasner for some help in this matter to find out what can be done and how expensive is to fix… I’ll keep you posted.