I agree that this is the most important point, to get a scope that you will use. I have a (12.5) inch Dobsonian that is 6 feet long, but the two pieces are light enough to move from point A to point B with minimal grunting. It has absolutely NO setup time. It goes from my mudroom out the door to the deck. OK, it's not as dark as some places I could get to in 30 minutes, and the house blocks much of the view to the northeast, but it gets used often.
I ended up with a Discovery Telescopes 12.5" Dob after reading several reviews on the web that the Celestron 9" Dob was noticeably better quality than the other sizes in their line. Several of the posts revealed that Discovery Telescopes made the 9" for Celestron but the rest were mass produced. I got mine delivered for $1500 a couple of years ago. I like the Dobs because they are very easy to use and are good at the deep sky stuff. Not to be overlooked is that when you buy a Dob vs. a refractor or Schmidt or whatever, a higher fraction of your money is spent on the optics--those latter scopes require crazy expensive mounts. I think the mirror, bought separately, for my scope was $950 leaving $350 for the stand, eyepieces, spider/secondary, focuser etc., and a couple hundred for shipping. But you wont be doing photography with a Dob.
And as others have said, binoculars and some good software are essential. I will add the book "Binocular Astronomy" as a must have. Good maps and a great season-by-season guide--the vast majority of the good binocular targets are good telescope targets too.
Delphion http://www.delphion.com/ is the best patent search tool there is, IMO. It's $200 USD per month. At the price of filing a patent, it's a bargain. FreePatentsOnline http://www.freepatentsonline.com/ is not nearly as slick, but it's free. I used to use Delphion, I love it--especially the 'snapshot' feature which lets you find out who's doing what very easily. I use freepatentsonline now since I don't have an employer paying for Delphion, it works.
Be warned, prior art search is itself an art. If your not experienced at least in the technical literature, better get an IP attorney.
BTW, the guy at the top who posted "Why bother? Nobody else does." was FUNNY, not INFORMATIVE. Do your prior art search and at least have part of a clue that you might have freedom to operate. Otherwise you are wasting a lot of money, and not just yours.
While I think the report is somewhat interesting, these experts seem overly optimistic. I also notice the vast majority of them are academic researchers, perhaps there is a connection there. Less than ten percent were from industry--a mistake I think, but admittedly it's much more difficult to identify the right people in industry than in academics.
Having worked in industry in a position that had me constantly checking out various new achievements in nanobiotech, I can say that there have been some outstanding successes (for example, see the work of Chad Mirkin and his companies). But for many of the enormous milestones cited in the report, the experts seem to feel that we're there after only a few more years of research. I think we have much much further to go on many of them.
One thing about this report that bothers me is that quite a few of the subjects listed need not have anything to do with nanotech. The first one, for example, is understanding the cell cycle. There is absolutely no reason why nanotech is needed to solve this riddle. Nanobiotech may give us the answers there, but the answers may just as likely come from more conventional technologies. And lab-on-a-chip is most desirably NOT nanoscale--at that scale the sample size (number of molecules) is generally too low to be statistically significant for most applications.
Part of the problem is what is defined as nanotechnology--this varies quite a bit. This is extremely important to the issue of regulation. Automobile tires are classified as nanotechnology by some--apparently carbon nanotubes are an ingredient of tires to the tune of some million or so tons a year if I remember correctly. IMO it is folly to even consider the possibility of regulating nanotechnology, it is much too diverse. There are all kinds of dangerous technologies, some of them may come in small packages.
Of course Bill Joy is partly to blame for the potential regulatory issues having been one of those behind the 'grey goo' nonsence where nanorobots go awry and begin deconstructing all matter. To all the 'grey goo' proponents: please study physical chemistry--in particular the part about the Boltzmann distribution. If by some miracle little nanomanufacturing robots are realized, surely those quantum farts would blow them all to Hell!
-- "Nano" - prefix used with corporate moniker to acquire venture capital.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree that this is the most important point, to get a scope that you will use. I have a (12.5) inch Dobsonian that is 6 feet long, but the two pieces are light enough to move from point A to point B with minimal grunting. It has absolutely NO setup time. It goes from my mudroom out the door to the deck. OK, it's not as dark as some places I could get to in 30 minutes, and the house blocks much of the view to the northeast, but it gets used often.
I ended up with a Discovery Telescopes 12.5" Dob after reading several reviews on the web that the Celestron 9" Dob was noticeably better quality than the other sizes in their line. Several of the posts revealed that Discovery Telescopes made the 9" for Celestron but the rest were mass produced. I got mine delivered for $1500 a couple of years ago. I like the Dobs because they are very easy to use and are good at the deep sky stuff. Not to be overlooked is that when you buy a Dob vs. a refractor or Schmidt or whatever, a higher fraction of your money is spent on the optics--those latter scopes require crazy expensive mounts. I think the mirror, bought separately, for my scope was $950 leaving $350 for the stand, eyepieces, spider/secondary, focuser etc., and a couple hundred for shipping. But you wont be doing photography with a Dob.
And as others have said, binoculars and some good software are essential. I will add the book "Binocular Astronomy" as a must have. Good maps and a great season-by-season guide--the vast majority of the good binocular targets are good telescope targets too.
C
Delphion http://www.delphion.com/ is the best patent search tool there is, IMO. It's $200 USD per month. At the price of filing a patent, it's a bargain. FreePatentsOnline http://www.freepatentsonline.com/ is not nearly as slick, but it's free. I used to use Delphion, I love it--especially the 'snapshot' feature which lets you find out who's doing what very easily. I use freepatentsonline now since I don't have an employer paying for Delphion, it works.
Be warned, prior art search is itself an art. If your not experienced at least in the technical literature, better get an IP attorney.
BTW, the guy at the top who posted "Why bother? Nobody else does." was FUNNY, not INFORMATIVE. Do your prior art search and at least have part of a clue that you might have freedom to operate. Otherwise you are wasting a lot of money, and not just yours.
While I think the report is somewhat interesting, these experts seem overly optimistic. I also notice the vast majority of them are academic researchers, perhaps there is a connection there. Less than ten percent were from industry--a mistake I think, but admittedly it's much more difficult to identify the right people in industry than in academics.
Having worked in industry in a position that had me constantly checking out various new achievements in nanobiotech, I can say that there have been some outstanding successes (for example, see the work of Chad Mirkin and his companies). But for many of the enormous milestones cited in the report, the experts seem to feel that we're there after only a few more years of research. I think we have much much further to go on many of them.
One thing about this report that bothers me is that quite a few of the subjects listed need not have anything to do with nanotech. The first one, for example, is understanding the cell cycle. There is absolutely no reason why nanotech is needed to solve this riddle. Nanobiotech may give us the answers there, but the answers may just as likely come from more conventional technologies. And lab-on-a-chip is most desirably NOT nanoscale--at that scale the sample size (number of molecules) is generally too low to be statistically significant for most applications.
Part of the problem is what is defined as nanotechnology--this varies quite a bit. This is extremely important to the issue of regulation. Automobile tires are classified as nanotechnology by some--apparently carbon nanotubes are an ingredient of tires to the tune of some million or so tons a year if I remember correctly. IMO it is folly to even consider the possibility of regulating nanotechnology, it is much too diverse. There are all kinds of dangerous technologies, some of them may come in small packages.
Of course Bill Joy is partly to blame for the potential regulatory issues having been one of those behind the 'grey goo' nonsence where nanorobots go awry and begin deconstructing all matter. To all the 'grey goo' proponents: please study physical chemistry--in particular the part about the Boltzmann distribution. If by some miracle little nanomanufacturing robots are realized, surely those quantum farts would blow them all to Hell!
--
"Nano" - prefix used with corporate moniker to acquire venture capital.