First get into astronomy, then astrophotography
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Entry-Level Astronomy?
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· Score: 2, Informative
My advice - learn the sky first. There's tons to see, and you'll need practice finding it. If you've been interested in astronomy, maybe you already have used binoculars (which is a good start) to scan the sky. If you're in a hurry and want to get your first telescope, I'll give the advice that was given to me -- get a Dobsonian reflector. Dobs are very easy to set up, don't require alignment, and are generally lighter (important if you're planning on carrying your scope). The downside is that you have to manually track what you're looking at, and simply can't do astrophotography. As many people have said, you'll have a hard time getting a good telescope with a good mount with a drive system for under $1000. What you can do is spend ~$500 on something like the Orion SkyQuest XT8 Intelliscope (that's what I have and I love it), use it for a while (maybe a couple years depending on how frequently you take it out) and get to know the night sky, then when you've saved up that $1000 again in your astronomy budget, get a nice equatorial mount for it with a drive system, put some rings on the tube and attach it to the mount instead of the Dobs base. Oh, and order a Barlow lens along with the scope. Also, I really enjoy having a solar filter - why limit your telescope to night use??
The time you spend learning the sky with your Dobs will also help you decide if you want to spend the extra money for the fancy mount, camera, etc.
One thing I'll point out that may be blindingly obvious to some, but comes as a surprise to others... for the most part, images in your telescope appear in black-and-white to the naked eye. There simply isn't enough light for your eye to detect color. Once you get a spiffy camera and that fancy mount, the longer exposure pictures will get you all the color you want.
There was a conflict as you described... Apple got into the recording business anyway, and thus released the system beep sound called "Sosumi". (So sue me) Or at least, that's how the legend goes.
Early on in Scrapheap Challenge, there seemed to be a wide variety of contraptions that teams would have to build - anything from various styles of projectile launchers to windmill-coffee-grinders. As the show got older (and modified to an American audience?), it seems that more and more often the challenge is to build yet another car. Is this because the production team runs out of ideas, or is this a marketing thing? (Or something else entirely?)
Another question...
I seem to remember reading that the educational side of Scrapheap Challenge was a large part of why you made the show. Have your interests changed with Full Metal Challenge, or have you been typecast?
And finally...
Are you a frequent slashdot reader? Did you expect so many questions posted on this thread to be people asking you for a date? In the U.S. at least, some women feel that being attractive (or in any way sexual) is a barrier to being successful in business/taken seriously. Is that sort of response frustrating or flattering?
You might try out www.freewwweb.com. They're one of the free ISP's and they've got nation-wide coverage (it looks like they connect into UUNet's dialup system). For whatever reason (and I can't figure out how they make money unless they track usage), they don't force any ads on you, and they require no special software. Their web site has a list of all their phone numbers. You can sign up online and your account is instantly created. Just read the FAQ before you get started (for example, you should know that you log in with "username@freewwweb.com" instead of just "username").
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My advice - learn the sky first. There's tons to see, and you'll need practice finding it. If you've been interested in astronomy, maybe you already have used binoculars (which is a good start) to scan the sky. If you're in a hurry and want to get your first telescope, I'll give the advice that was given to me -- get a Dobsonian reflector. Dobs are very easy to set up, don't require alignment, and are generally lighter (important if you're planning on carrying your scope). The downside is that you have to manually track what you're looking at, and simply can't do astrophotography. As many people have said, you'll have a hard time getting a good telescope with a good mount with a drive system for under $1000. What you can do is spend ~$500 on something like the Orion SkyQuest XT8 Intelliscope (that's what I have and I love it), use it for a while (maybe a couple years depending on how frequently you take it out) and get to know the night sky, then when you've saved up that $1000 again in your astronomy budget, get a nice equatorial mount for it with a drive system, put some rings on the tube and attach it to the mount instead of the Dobs base. Oh, and order a Barlow lens along with the scope. Also, I really enjoy having a solar filter - why limit your telescope to night use??
The time you spend learning the sky with your Dobs will also help you decide if you want to spend the extra money for the fancy mount, camera, etc.
One thing I'll point out that may be blindingly obvious to some, but comes as a surprise to others... for the most part, images in your telescope appear in black-and-white to the naked eye. There simply isn't enough light for your eye to detect color. Once you get a spiffy camera and that fancy mount, the longer exposure pictures will get you all the color you want.
There was a conflict as you described... Apple got into the recording business anyway, and thus released the system beep sound called "Sosumi". (So sue me) Or at least, that's how the legend goes.
My question...
Early on in Scrapheap Challenge, there seemed to be a wide variety of contraptions that teams would have to build - anything from various styles of projectile launchers to windmill-coffee-grinders. As the show got older (and modified to an American audience?), it seems that more and more often the challenge is to build yet another car. Is this because the production team runs out of ideas, or is this a marketing thing? (Or something else entirely?)
Another question...
I seem to remember reading that the educational side of Scrapheap Challenge was a large part of why you made the show. Have your interests changed with Full Metal Challenge, or have you been typecast?
And finally...
Are you a frequent slashdot reader? Did you expect so many questions posted on this thread to be people asking you for a date? In the U.S. at least, some women feel that being attractive (or in any way sexual) is a barrier to being successful in business/taken seriously. Is that sort of response frustrating or flattering?
You might try out www.freewwweb.com. They're one of the free ISP's and they've got nation-wide coverage (it looks like they connect into UUNet's dialup system). For whatever reason (and I can't figure out how they make money unless they track usage), they don't force any ads on you, and they require no special software. Their web site has a list of all their phone numbers. You can sign up online and your account is instantly created. Just read the FAQ before you get started (for example, you should know that you log in with "username@freewwweb.com" instead of just "username").