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That's how shareware always has been, some features are crippled or after so many days a nag pops up. With out it people would never actually register. This article discusses how jacksonville is planning on prosecuting people who fail to register shareware after the trial peroid. Mostly going after government offices and schools, but still it's a start, shareware ins't free, people need to pay.

According to this article jacksonville is going to try and prosecute people they catch using unregistered shareware for longer than the trial peroid. They aren't really going after end users, only government offices and contractors...scary precedent though...who will they go after next?

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You can get books telling how to make telescopes from Willman-Bell and ask for help on the Amateur Telescope Maker's mailing list. Dan Cassaro can sell you a reasonably priced mirror grinding kit.

You can find many products for amateur astronomers at the Astronomy Mall.

Clear Skies!

You can get books telling how to make telescopes from Willman-Bell and ask for help on the Amateur Telescope Maker's mailing list. Dan Cassaro can sell you a reasonably priced mirror grinding kit.

You can find many products for amateur astronomers at the Astronomy Mall.

Clear Skies!

The reason they are called the Leonids is that the main orbital path the meteroids are on before they strike the earth is such that it points back in the general direction of the constellation Leo at the point where the earth crosses the comet's orbit each year (meteor showers come from debris broken off a comet).

If you make a black-on-white copy of a starchart, and draw a line on it for each meteor you see when it happens, with an arrowhead in the direction of travel, at the end of the night you will see the most of the paths generally radiating away from Leo, like spokes radiating from the hub of a bicycle wheel. This is like what you'd see if you stood in the middle of a multilane highway as cars sped past you, facing where they come from - you'd see the cars angling to the right and left, but "radiating" from one spot in the distance.

If a meteor's path is very short, it is headed in your general direction. If it just a bright spot, then it is headed straight for you, so you know when to duck. If it is very long, it is headed away from you.

I don't know if it is still practiced, but there used to be organized efforts among amateur astronomers to map meteor paths during showers so their orbits could be calculated. Now I guess it would be more practical and accurate to do it with radar. To do make such a calculation, the observers also need to write down the time they saw each meteor.

Even so, the meteors won't all be radiating from a single point. There will be a lot of randomness. Part of this will be because the meteoroids are spread out in space, to either side of the comets orbit, each on its own slightly different orbit.

Also, as it approaches the earth, the earth's gravity will disturb the orbit of the meteoroid. If the meteoroid is heading straight to the center of the earth just before it hits, then it will just go faster. If it's heading a ways to one side of the earth, then its path will be deflected in towards the earth, and when it hits it will be at a highly deflected path. If it's even farther to the side, it won't hit the earth but it's orbit will be disturbed, and many orbits of a planet through a comet's path will introduce a lot of scatter in future showers.

Now let me shill for amateur astronomy. I'm grinding my own telescope mirror. You can join the Amateur Telescope Maker's mailing list and they'll tell you how - read the FAQ. Dan Cassaro can sell you a mirror grinding kit. You can get books with instructions (you need a whole book, it's pretty involved) from Willman-Bell. You can find lots of tips on the Telescope Making WebRing.

Or you can buy telescopes from Meade and Celestron or shop at the shop at the astronomy mall. Finally, there's a new ATM portal at www.telescopemaking.com.

The reason they are called the Leonids is that the main orbital path the meteroids are on before they strike the earth is such that it points back in the general direction of the constellation Leo at the point where the earth crosses the comet's orbit each year (meteor showers come from debris broken off a comet).

If you make a black-on-white copy of a starchart, and draw a line on it for each meteor you see when it happens, with an arrowhead in the direction of travel, at the end of the night you will see the most of the paths generally radiating away from Leo, like spokes radiating from the hub of a bicycle wheel. This is like what you'd see if you stood in the middle of a multilane highway as cars sped past you, facing where they come from - you'd see the cars angling to the right and left, but "radiating" from one spot in the distance.

If a meteor's path is very short, it is headed in your general direction. If it just a bright spot, then it is headed straight for you, so you know when to duck. If it is very long, it is headed away from you.

I don't know if it is still practiced, but there used to be organized efforts among amateur astronomers to map meteor paths during showers so their orbits could be calculated. Now I guess it would be more practical and accurate to do it with radar. To do make such a calculation, the observers also need to write down the time they saw each meteor.

Even so, the meteors won't all be radiating from a single point. There will be a lot of randomness. Part of this will be because the meteoroids are spread out in space, to either side of the comets orbit, each on its own slightly different orbit.

Also, as it approaches the earth, the earth's gravity will disturb the orbit of the meteoroid. If the meteoroid is heading straight to the center of the earth just before it hits, then it will just go faster. If it's heading a ways to one side of the earth, then its path will be deflected in towards the earth, and when it hits it will be at a highly deflected path. If it's even farther to the side, it won't hit the earth but it's orbit will be disturbed, and many orbits of a planet through a comet's path will introduce a lot of scatter in future showers.

Now let me shill for amateur astronomy. I'm grinding my own telescope mirror. You can join the Amateur Telescope Maker's mailing list and they'll tell you how - read the FAQ. Dan Cassaro can sell you a mirror grinding kit. You can get books with instructions (you need a whole book, it's pretty involved) from Willman-Bell. You can find lots of tips on the Telescope Making WebRing.

Or you can buy telescopes from Meade and Celestron or shop at the shop at the astronomy mall. Finally, there's a new ATM portal at www.telescopemaking.com.

I made several telescopes when I was a teenager, and have recently taken up grinding glass again after a long hiatus. I was also pleased to find the Central Maine Astronomical Society is in my area and joined last night while visiting their new observatory.

Telescope mirrors can be made by hand with suprisingly simple equipment. An eight-inch diameter telescope will run you about $250, maybe less if you're creative, for the mirror kit, eyepiece, aluminizing, and mounting.

There may be a telescope making or astronomy club in your area. A good way to find out is to subscribe to the ATM mailing list. Another way is to follow some of these links:

• Chabot Telescope Maker's Workshop (Oakland, California)
• Sidewalk Astronomers (Los Angeles and San Francisco)
• Amateur Telescope Makers of Boston
• Stellafane - Springfield Vermont, where the hobby was started in the USA

If you don't want to build a telescope, you can buy one. The telescopes made by Meade and Celestron are well known. You can find ads for dealers in the pages of Sky and Telescope Magazine, which you'll find in many bookstores.

A large number of astronomy products may be found through the Astronomy Mall.

Although the price differential for small telescopes like 6 or 8 inches is not that great between making it oneself and purchasing, the cost of purchasing really large instruments is really prohibitive, while large ones are actually affordable to make, comparable to purchasing a computer. If you start off making an 8 inch mirror, your next mirror can be much larger, say 16 inches, and amateurs commonly make mirrors from 20 to 30 inches, and I think there is a 72 inch mirror nearly complete made by some amateurs. My goal is to have a 40 inch observatory in my backyard.

Although I've listed U.S. organizations and companies, telescope making is practiced world-wide. A while back someone from Iraq subscribed to the ATM list and asked for help obtaining a kit. There are lots of subscribers from Europe and a number from Asia and Africa. Follow the links, and maybe you'll find a club in your home town, or at least within a reasonable distance!

I cannot describe the awe that comes from beholding the wonders of the heavens through a telescope made with one's own hands.

I made several telescopes when I was a teenager, and have recently taken up grinding glass again after a long hiatus. I was also pleased to find the Central Maine Astronomical Society is in my area and joined last night while visiting their new observatory.

Telescope mirrors can be made by hand with suprisingly simple equipment. An eight-inch diameter telescope will run you about $250, maybe less if you're creative, for the mirror kit, eyepiece, aluminizing, and mounting.

There may be a telescope making or astronomy club in your area. A good way to find out is to subscribe to the ATM mailing list. Another way is to follow some of these links:

• Chabot Telescope Maker's Workshop (Oakland, California)
• Sidewalk Astronomers (Los Angeles and San Francisco)
• Amateur Telescope Makers of Boston
• Stellafane - Springfield Vermont, where the hobby was started in the USA

If you don't want to build a telescope, you can buy one. The telescopes made by Meade and Celestron are well known. You can find ads for dealers in the pages of Sky and Telescope Magazine, which you'll find in many bookstores.

A large number of astronomy products may be found through the Astronomy Mall.

Although the price differential for small telescopes like 6 or 8 inches is not that great between making it oneself and purchasing, the cost of purchasing really large instruments is really prohibitive, while large ones are actually affordable to make, comparable to purchasing a computer. If you start off making an 8 inch mirror, your next mirror can be much larger, say 16 inches, and amateurs commonly make mirrors from 20 to 30 inches, and I think there is a 72 inch mirror nearly complete made by some amateurs. My goal is to have a 40 inch observatory in my backyard.

Although I've listed U.S. organizations and companies, telescope making is practiced world-wide. A while back someone from Iraq subscribed to the ATM list and asked for help obtaining a kit. There are lots of subscribers from Europe and a number from Asia and Africa. Follow the links, and maybe you'll find a club in your home town, or at least within a reasonable distance!

I cannot describe the awe that comes from beholding the wonders of the heavens through a telescope made with one's own hands.

The 6 inch had a decent figure but I didn't know I could send it away to be vacuum aluminized, so I chemically deposited silver on it using chemicals I bought at the University of Idaho chemistry stockroom. Take my advice, it's much better to get a mirror aluminized.

I hurried a bit too much on fine grinding the 10 inch and wasn't happy with it, so I tried again with my 8 inch and was much more patient, and got excellent results from it (1/10 wave according to Chabot Amateur Telescope Maker's Workshop's Paul Zurakowski).

Grinding telescopes and being a sciency kind of guy led me to study astronomy at CalTech where I assisted CalTech astronomer Jeremy Mould in observing the the Palomar 60 inch and 200 inch telescopes - the experience of a lifetime for an amateur astronomer.

It's been about 18 years since I last worked any glass but I just bought an 8 inch plate glass kit from Dan Cassaro. You can buy Pyrex kits and optical glass (suitable for lenses) from Newport Glass.

I'm starting to write about the telescope I'm about to work on here.

If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area check out the Eastbay Astronomical Society's Chabot Amateur Telescope Maker's Workshop (there's an observatory there too, it's in Oakland), Fremont Peak Observatory, which has a 30 inch reflector that's open to the public, with regular gatherings of amateurs who bring their telescopes up there, and the San Francisco Sidewalk Astronomers - the Sidewalk Astronomers set up telescopes on city sidewalks and introduce people to astronomy by inviting them to look through their scopes.

You can get books on astronomy, and importantly, the specifics of how to actually grind and polish a telescope from Willman-Bell and Newport Glass.

Check out this guy who made a ribbed mirror blank by cutting out a pattern from one disk of glass with a water jet and fusing it to a solid sheet in a furnace.

Visit Google's index of Amateur Telescope Making, particularly http://www.atmpage.com.

If you want to get into amateur telescope making, take advantage of an immensely valuable resource that wasn't available to me when I was a kid - subscribe to the ATM List - here's the FAQ.

Mike

The 6 inch had a decent figure but I didn't know I could send it away to be vacuum aluminized, so I chemically deposited silver on it using chemicals I bought at the University of Idaho chemistry stockroom. Take my advice, it's much better to get a mirror aluminized.

I hurried a bit too much on fine grinding the 10 inch and wasn't happy with it, so I tried again with my 8 inch and was much more patient, and got excellent results from it (1/10 wave according to Chabot Amateur Telescope Maker's Workshop's Paul Zurakowski).

Grinding telescopes and being a sciency kind of guy led me to study astronomy at CalTech where I assisted CalTech astronomer Jeremy Mould in observing the the Palomar 60 inch and 200 inch telescopes - the experience of a lifetime for an amateur astronomer.

It's been about 18 years since I last worked any glass but I just bought an 8 inch plate glass kit from Dan Cassaro. You can buy Pyrex kits and optical glass (suitable for lenses) from Newport Glass.

I'm starting to write about the telescope I'm about to work on here.

If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area check out the Eastbay Astronomical Society's Chabot Amateur Telescope Maker's Workshop (there's an observatory there too, it's in Oakland), Fremont Peak Observatory, which has a 30 inch reflector that's open to the public, with regular gatherings of amateurs who bring their telescopes up there, and the San Francisco Sidewalk Astronomers - the Sidewalk Astronomers set up telescopes on city sidewalks and introduce people to astronomy by inviting them to look through their scopes.

You can get books on astronomy, and importantly, the specifics of how to actually grind and polish a telescope from Willman-Bell and Newport Glass.

Check out this guy who made a ribbed mirror blank by cutting out a pattern from one disk of glass with a water jet and fusing it to a solid sheet in a furnace.

Visit Google's index of Amateur Telescope Making, particularly http://www.atmpage.com.

If you want to get into amateur telescope making, take advantage of an immensely valuable resource that wasn't available to me when I was a kid - subscribe to the ATM List - here's the FAQ.

Mike