I am an amateur astronomer and bought one of these for my 12-year-old daughter's birthday. I thought it would be a fun daddy-daughter project putting it together and that it would be a good first telescope for her. I got it before they raised the price recently, so mine was around $23 shipped.
Here is my honest review of the scope and my buying experience. It took about two months longer than they said for it to arrive and their communication was non-existent. I was billed but never got a shipping notification. The invoice said it would take 4-6 weeks for delivery. After 6 weeks had passed, I tried to contact them to find out what the status was.
They have a phone number and email address listed on the site you can use to contact them, but the phone is never answered and just goes to voicemail, which was full the two times I called it. My emails were never answered. They eventually put up some vague delay information on their website, and I did finally get the telescope 11 weeks after I ordered it.
It was a fun project putting the scope together. The instructions were not very good, but we printed off some more detailed instructions from their website and everything went smoothly. The optics are good quality. Much, much better than your standard cheap department store telescope. We took it out on the first night and got a pretty good view of Jupiter. Note that the scope does not come with a tripod. I knew that (it is clear on their website) and had a couple photo tripods ready to use it on.
There are two main downsides to the scope. The first is the focuser. If you have used a regular telescope, you know that they all come with rack-and-pinion focusers. With this scope, you slide the eyepiece tube in and out (like an old pirate-y telescope) to focus. It is very difficult to keep an object in view (like Jupiter) when you have to slide the tube in and out. There is a lot of friction, but there has to be or it will just slide out of focus. So focusing is an exercise in frustration. My daughter was unable to do it and I had a pretty hard time myself.
The second is that it cannot use a diagonal. There is not enough travel in the focuser to allow a diagonal. That means that you strain your neck trying to see objects higher in the sky.
Having laid that information out for you, I still think it is a good scope. I hope my daughter gets some use out of it. I think that with practice the focusing will get easier.
don't get me started in the lack of arts, music and p.e.
Most of the musical education that a child will miss with the computer-based teaching can be supplied by watching TV and playing computer games.
For example, I became very familiar with many famous clasical works like Wagner's "Kill the Wabbit" by watching Bugs Bunny cartoons, and the "Autopilot Waltz" by Strauss from playing countless hours of Elite.
It is not very likely because blue stars are the youngest sort. They must have formed sometime fairly recently (in astronomical terms) which means that they could not have travelled very far from their birthplace.
How would somebodies profession really determine his/her childs' sex?
I think they have completely misinterpreted the data here. The data implies that the gender of a person's offspring can retroactively determine the occupation of the parent. And let me tell you, I was quite surprised to find out that I am a nurse!
You make an excellent point regarding the intent of the pollster, but why invoke your tin-foil hat by involving the "economic elite"? And why limit them to America and ~100 years? People of all economic, political, racial, national, etc. persuasions have been using propaganda for as long as humans have been around. And the media is just a handy tool to get their message to a broader audience.
I don't mind if I happen to type in the wrong page and see a bunch of useless ads. What irks me is when I am trying to do a search and all it returns are links to those ad pages.
However, there is one thing which science is fantastic at. All worthy science must be reproducible and disputable. This is what makes it science. Because of this, it doesn't matter what the biases of the scientists are. This is the breakthrough that made positivist science paramount.
That is very true. However, the bias of the scientist is evident when interpreting the resulting data. I don't believe that most people have problems with the actual data. But science in this regard is similar to statistics - you can spin the data to suit your needs.
The fake sites for which I have viewed the source do not tend to hold their own graphics. They link to the graphics on the official site (bank, ebay, whatever). Won't this just suck up the bandwidth of the real site?
The idea that the Earth travels around the Sun is just part of the theory of Planetary Motion. Electrons are just part of Atomic Theory. If they don't exist, your computer doesn't work. Gravity is just a theory.
I think you are the one misunderstanding the meaning of theory. Gravity is our theory to explain why things fall. That things fall nobody doubts. But what causes them to fall is science's current best guess based on the scientific method. Similarly with atomic theory. The principles of atomic theory are our best guess at explaining how things work and will most likely change over time. Just because it changes does not mean computers will stop working - just that our understanding of how computers work will be different.
Unfortunately, I have to agree that not much has changed. I realize why when I read a lot of the comments on/. which seem to be written by prepubescent, pr0n-addicted, socially backward males. Haha, no I'm not new here. And I don't subscribe to the "nerd" stereotypes.
I think the anonymity of the internet has some positives, but also some real negatives as people make comments that they would never make to a person's face. For example, could you imagine a person running around your school or office holding up a picture of the goatse guy. Some behaviors are simply not tolerated in the "real" world but are laughed at on-line.
I don't mean this as a flame, just an honest observation. I wish there was an easy answer, but as others have pointed out, sex sells. How do we expect the gaming companies to evolve when the gaming audiences are still so shallow?
With our current technology, the largest extra-solar planets are the only ones we can reliably detect, let alone photograph.
It helped significantly in this case that the planet was so far away from a dim star, because most of the difficulty comes when searching for a dim speck in the glare of a bright star. The December National Geographic had a great article on the search for extra-solar planets and compared it to finding a firefly in the glare of a lighthouse from several miles away.
Thus, astronomers have not ruled out the possibility of planets in nearby systems. In fact there are already a few hundred that have been found, but only by detecting the "wobble" of the sun as others here have pointed out. This is the first to be directly imaged.
As technology and methods continue to improve we will be able to detect smaller and smaller planets, closer and closer to their suns. The smallest currently detected is around 14 times the size of Earth (roughly the size of Neptune, I believe).
Once we can regularly detect Earth-sized planets in life-sustaining orbits, astronomers hope to be able to detect hints of the planets' compositions using the spectrums of light emitted (can't remember the exact terminology off-hand).
Anyway, for those of us familiar with astronomy and astrobiology, this is very exciting. And to put it into perspective, this image is of even better resolution than we had of Pluto until just a few years ago.
There seems to be a movement within the US towards some strange version of "decency" that does *not* include the way we treat our fellow person, but has *everything* to do with enforcing a certain religious viewpoint.
If you will recall your history, America was founded on these principles. It is not a movement *towards* anything. It has simply hovered around the same viewpoint for a few hundred years - from the time the first christian pilgrims fled Europe for religious freedom until now.
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I am an amateur astronomer and bought one of these for my 12-year-old daughter's birthday. I thought it would be a fun daddy-daughter project putting it together and that it would be a good first telescope for her. I got it before they raised the price recently, so mine was around $23 shipped.
Here is my honest review of the scope and my buying experience. It took about two months longer than they said for it to arrive and their communication was non-existent. I was billed but never got a shipping notification. The invoice said it would take 4-6 weeks for delivery. After 6 weeks had passed, I tried to contact them to find out what the status was.
They have a phone number and email address listed on the site you can use to contact them, but the phone is never answered and just goes to voicemail, which was full the two times I called it. My emails were never answered. They eventually put up some vague delay information on their website, and I did finally get the telescope 11 weeks after I ordered it.
It was a fun project putting the scope together. The instructions were not very good, but we printed off some more detailed instructions from their website and everything went smoothly. The optics are good quality. Much, much better than your standard cheap department store telescope. We took it out on the first night and got a pretty good view of Jupiter. Note that the scope does not come with a tripod. I knew that (it is clear on their website) and had a couple photo tripods ready to use it on.
There are two main downsides to the scope. The first is the focuser. If you have used a regular telescope, you know that they all come with rack-and-pinion focusers. With this scope, you slide the eyepiece tube in and out (like an old pirate-y telescope) to focus. It is very difficult to keep an object in view (like Jupiter) when you have to slide the tube in and out. There is a lot of friction, but there has to be or it will just slide out of focus. So focusing is an exercise in frustration. My daughter was unable to do it and I had a pretty hard time myself.
The second is that it cannot use a diagonal. There is not enough travel in the focuser to allow a diagonal. That means that you strain your neck trying to see objects higher in the sky.
Having laid that information out for you, I still think it is a good scope. I hope my daughter gets some use out of it. I think that with practice the focusing will get easier.
don't get me started in the lack of arts, music and p.e.
Most of the musical education that a child will miss with the computer-based teaching can be supplied by watching TV and playing computer games.
For example, I became very familiar with many famous clasical works like Wagner's "Kill the Wabbit" by watching Bugs Bunny cartoons, and the "Autopilot Waltz" by Strauss from playing countless hours of Elite.
If a time machine were ever to be invented, it would currently be U.S. Patent #1.
"You say that so much it's lost all meaning."
Do not look directly at extrasolar planets with remaining good eye.
/. group-think has finally taken over. I welcome my new meme overlords. Or something.
That was my first thought when I read the headline. I guess
I believe that's part of the definition of terrorism.
No, that's capitalism.
It is not very likely because blue stars are the youngest sort. They must have formed sometime fairly recently (in astronomical terms) which means that they could not have travelled very far from their birthplace.
Talk about taxation without representation...
I like the sound of "The Boston MP3 Party".
What I'd really like to see is a way to broadcast messages to other drivers, like:
"GET OUT OF MY WAY, MORON!!!"
or
"SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT!!!"
or
"TURN OFF YOUR BLINKER!!!"
How would somebodies profession really determine his/her childs' sex?
I think they have completely misinterpreted the data here. The data implies that the gender of a person's offspring can retroactively determine the occupation of the parent. And let me tell you, I was quite surprised to find out that I am a nurse!
The real question is, how does it feel?
I agree! The most logical use for flexible concrete is a new line of designer clothing!
This should really improve the performance of my favorite game!
You make an excellent point regarding the intent of the pollster, but why invoke your tin-foil hat by involving the "economic elite"? And why limit them to America and ~100 years? People of all economic, political, racial, national, etc. persuasions have been using propaganda for as long as humans have been around. And the media is just a handy tool to get their message to a broader audience.
I don't mind if I happen to type in the wrong page and see a bunch of useless ads. What irks me is when I am trying to do a search and all it returns are links to those ad pages.
I find it particularly ironic that sextant at #59 was beaten by Mattel Magic 8-Ball at #57. What were these people thinking?
That is very true. However, the bias of the scientist is evident when interpreting the resulting data. I don't believe that most people have problems with the actual data. But science in this regard is similar to statistics - you can spin the data to suit your needs.
The fake sites for which I have viewed the source do not tend to hold their own graphics. They link to the graphics on the official site (bank, ebay, whatever). Won't this just suck up the bandwidth of the real site?
Shouldn't the ST series be under a Do Not Resuscitate order by now?
Please let it die. Will somebody please think of the children?!
That is a very good question. There a couple reasons I can think of as to why exploration is primarily in the same plane as the planets.
First, you can get there faster by using the gravity of intervening planets.
Second, you can do some interesting science (take pictures, etc) on the planets and other objects you pass by.
The idea that the Earth travels around the Sun is just part of the theory of Planetary Motion. Electrons are just part of Atomic Theory. If they don't exist, your computer doesn't work. Gravity is just a theory.
I think you are the one misunderstanding the meaning of theory. Gravity is our theory to explain why things fall. That things fall nobody doubts. But what causes them to fall is science's current best guess based on the scientific method. Similarly with atomic theory. The principles of atomic theory are our best guess at explaining how things work and will most likely change over time. Just because it changes does not mean computers will stop working - just that our understanding of how computers work will be different.
Unfortunately, I have to agree that not much has changed. I realize why when I read a lot of the comments on /. which seem to be written by prepubescent, pr0n-addicted, socially backward males. Haha, no I'm not new here. And I don't subscribe to the "nerd" stereotypes.
I think the anonymity of the internet has some positives, but also some real negatives as people make comments that they would never make to a person's face. For example, could you imagine a person running around your school or office holding up a picture of the goatse guy. Some behaviors are simply not tolerated in the "real" world but are laughed at on-line.
I don't mean this as a flame, just an honest observation. I wish there was an easy answer, but as others have pointed out, sex sells. How do we expect the gaming companies to evolve when the gaming audiences are still so shallow?
With our current technology, the largest extra-solar planets are the only ones we can reliably detect, let alone photograph.
It helped significantly in this case that the planet was so far away from a dim star, because most of the difficulty comes when searching for a dim speck in the glare of a bright star. The December National Geographic had a great article on the search for extra-solar planets and compared it to finding a firefly in the glare of a lighthouse from several miles away.
Thus, astronomers have not ruled out the possibility of planets in nearby systems. In fact there are already a few hundred that have been found, but only by detecting the "wobble" of the sun as others here have pointed out. This is the first to be directly imaged.
As technology and methods continue to improve we will be able to detect smaller and smaller planets, closer and closer to their suns. The smallest currently detected is around 14 times the size of Earth (roughly the size of Neptune, I believe).
Once we can regularly detect Earth-sized planets in life-sustaining orbits, astronomers hope to be able to detect hints of the planets' compositions using the spectrums of light emitted (can't remember the exact terminology off-hand).
Anyway, for those of us familiar with astronomy and astrobiology, this is very exciting. And to put it into perspective, this image is of even better resolution than we had of Pluto until just a few years ago.
Yes, IAAAA (I am an amateur astronomer).
'It means that really a tiny minority with a very focused political agenda is trying to censor American television and radio.'
I think he missed the election results.
If you will recall your history, America was founded on these principles. It is not a movement *towards* anything. It has simply hovered around the same viewpoint for a few hundred years - from the time the first christian pilgrims fled Europe for religious freedom until now.
That function is 92.97% accurate. That's an A-. Good enough for me.