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Um, no. Just no.

Mary Masterman

Here's the page for the IAU: Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams which explains how to submit discoveries. (IAU = International Astronomical Union.) They seem to have gone to email mainly, and yes, spam is a problem. Text only messages please! (Submit CCD images seperately.) And you probably want to stick to the format developed for telegrams.

Next week is also National Astronomy Week, with National Astronomy Day scheduled for Saturday, April 24th. Dust off those old scopes and binocs and get outside!

First, I'd strongly suggest avoiding anything you can buy in a mall. The quality just isn't there, and the capabilities are often a little, er, overstated. (for a good rule of thumb, look for no more than 50x magnification for each inch of telescope aperture. That is, if you see a 3-inch refractor advertising "300x Magnification!!", then don't buy it. You might, under extremely bright and ideal conditions, achieve 300x, but it'll probably look like crap.)

In the astronomy club I used to be a part of (NOVAC, I quit 'cause of time constraints), there were some pretty strong differences over Meade, a fair consensus on quality Celestron (though I seem to remember they were going through a change in ownership that may have affected their reputation), and there are a lot of smaller semi-custom telescope manufacturers out there in a decent price range.

My best advice would be to go to a local astronomy club for information and advice -- they'll have people who REALLY know their stuff, and can give a good recommendation for just about any price range. The NOVAC link above has (under "Resources") a nice page with lots of different "how to buy a telescope" pages. Personally, I've heard "moderatly good" things about Orion 'scopes (wouldja believe, they're at telescope.com), and they've got a nice catalog with decent prices.

A key criteria is what you think he'll be looking for. Planetary scopes need better magnification, but not as much light-gathering capability. Plus, a smaller 'scope is easier to outfit with an errect-image prism for daytime use (birdwatching, for a politically-correct example). If he's more apt to go after "faint fuzzies," like galaxies, clusters, and nebulae, then a larger diameter scope (like 8-16 inches) becomes more of a requirement because of the better light-gathering capability. (Plus, he should definitely check out the Messier Marathon, "held" each March, as an observational challenge).

There're lots of other resources out there (one national-level organization is the Astronomical League, which has lists of many local groups which could provide you with input into telescope selection, and, most importantly, could provide your father with the support and encouragement to help him turn a cool gift into a favorite hobby. Too many people (myself included) simply buy a 'scope and then never make the effort to enjoy it, by being a part of a good, active club, he'll be likely to get infected by their enthusiasm and explore avenues he might not otherwise think of.

Good luck!

Halton Arp, an award winning astronomer who used to be Edwin Hubble's assistant, has spent years documenting physically connected astronomical bodies with vastly different redshifts. That's simply impossible under the current theories. But they exist.

He's published several books on the subject including Seeing Red: Redshifts, Cosmology and Academic Science which presents considerable information that's been surpressed by astronomers whose theories have been threatened.

In Seeing Red, he also lays out an alternate, simplified theory, which is a _slight_ modification of the general theory of relativity that ends up predicting the real world observations without resorting to magic constants, curved space, "dark matter", and other kludges that the currently accepted theories need.

Here's some other info about it.

Slashdotters should get involved and use Open Source to help make it happen.

Hopefully, this close Mars does not have the same effect on the Linux shares as the moon, when it is unusually close to the earth.