Utah Astronomy subscriber / SLAS member makes good (OT)
Hi, here's the story of my misadventure at Pit'N'Pole, and a death that makes it seem pretty trivial: http://www.deseretnews.com/blog/47/10008686/Nightly-News-Astronomy-blog-The-... Best wishes, Joe
Joe, I can feel your pain. During Comet West's apparition, I had a near-death experience when a borrowed Nikon F1 fell off my 8" Newtonain, where I was using it for piggy-back shots. It and it's lens suffered severe damage, falling on the rocks and snow at Little Mountain. Fortunately, the owner didn't kill me (I was just a teen-ager and he was a professional photographer).
Lucky!! ________________________________ From: Chuck Hards <chuck.hards@gmail.com> To: Utah Astronomy <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Thu, March 18, 2010 1:44:24 PM Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] An awful astronomy expedtion Joe, I can feel your pain. During Comet West's apparition, I had a near-death experience when a borrowed Nikon F1 fell off my 8" Newtonain, where I was using it for piggy-back shots. It and it's lens suffered severe damage, falling on the rocks and snow at Little Mountain. Fortunately, the owner didn't kill me (I was just a teen-ager and he was a professional photographer). _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Visit the Photo Gallery: http://www.slas.us/gallery2/main.php Visit the Wiki: http://www.utahastronomy.com
On 18 Mar 2010, at 02:14, Joe Bauman wrote:
Hi, here's the story of my misadventure at Pit'N'Pole, and a death that makes it seem pretty trivial:
http://www.deseretnews.com/blog/47/10008686/Nightly-News-Astronomy-blog-The-...
Best wishes, Joe
Well, since we're using Joe's thread to tell our tales of astro-woe I'll add mine. In 1986 my then wife Colleen and I trekked to Australia to get pictures of Comet Halley. At the time it was thought that would be the best place to see it. Little did we know that it turned out to have been better here, but that's another story. So there I was, in the middle of the Australian outback in the middle of the night with my C-8 and Schmidt camera. And I hear this "clunk" and the diagonal and eyepiece fall to the dirt. I wasn't happy but, hey, what damage could have falling in loose dirt do...? So I reach down and pick them up and find that the eyepiece was still attached to the diagonal and undamaged. But the part of the diagonal that goes inside the telescope was nowhere to be found. Apparently it had come unscrewed during transit and separated from the rest of the diagonal when I was setting up. And where did I find the missing piece? Inside the OTA resting against the inside of the corrector plate. No way I could get at it without removing the corrector plate and I wasn't going to try that in the desert in the dark. And with it rolling around inside the tube I couldn't move the scope above the horizontal without it contacting the primary mirror. Augh! Well, I'd spent way too much money and traveled way too far so I was not going to go home with no pictures. So the Schmidt stayed in the case but I did mount a 35mm camera piggyback on the C-8 and verrrrry slowly pointed the scope at the comet and carefully shot a couple of quick shots of the comet. The errant piece was resting against the mirror but did no damage. Here's a scan of one of the two pictures I shot: http://users.wirelessbeehive.com/~paw/temp/WOEISME-02.JPG Perhaps you'll notice the color looks off. When I got home I had something like 40 rolls of film and processed them all myself in batches of 6. I screwed up the chemistry in one of those batches of six and, of course, the Halley shots were in that batch... Someone just didn't want me getting any comet shots. We retraced our steps a couple of years later to reshoot some of the bad shots but of course Halley was long gone. Oh, and here's a shot of me removing the diagonal part from the C-8 the next morning in the hotel lobby: http://users.wirelessbeehive.com/~paw/temp/WOEISME-01.JPG Of course that shot was not in the bad batch. patrick
The Halley pic is good, but I love the view of Patrick with the evil diagonal part! -- Joe ________________________________ From: Patrick Wiggins <paw@wirelessbeehive.com> To: Utah Astronomy <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Thu, March 18, 2010 11:00:27 PM Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] An awful astronomy expedtion On 18 Mar 2010, at 02:14, Joe Bauman wrote:
Hi, here's the story of my misadventure at Pit'N'Pole, and a death that makes it seem pretty trivial:
http://www.deseretnews.com/blog/47/10008686/Nightly-News-Astronomy-blog-The-...
Best wishes, Joe
Well, since we're using Joe's thread to tell our tales of astro-woe I'll add mine. In 1986 my then wife Colleen and I trekked to Australia to get pictures of Comet Halley. At the time it was thought that would be the best place to see it. Little did we know that it turned out to have been better here, but that's another story. So there I was, in the middle of the Australian outback in the middle of the night with my C-8 and Schmidt camera. And I hear this "clunk" and the diagonal and eyepiece fall to the dirt. I wasn't happy but, hey, what damage could have falling in loose dirt do...? So I reach down and pick them up and find that the eyepiece was still attached to the diagonal and undamaged. But the part of the diagonal that goes inside the telescope was nowhere to be found. Apparently it had come unscrewed during transit and separated from the rest of the diagonal when I was setting up. And where did I find the missing piece? Inside the OTA resting against the inside of the corrector plate. No way I could get at it without removing the corrector plate and I wasn't going to try that in the desert in the dark. And with it rolling around inside the tube I couldn't move the scope above the horizontal without it contacting the primary mirror. Augh! Well, I'd spent way too much money and traveled way too far so I was not going to go home with no pictures. So the Schmidt stayed in the case but I did mount a 35mm camera piggyback on the C-8 and verrrrry slowly pointed the scope at the comet and carefully shot a couple of quick shots of the comet. The errant piece was resting against the mirror but did no damage. Here's a scan of one of the two pictures I shot: http://users.wirelessbeehive.com/~paw/temp/WOEISME-02.JPG Perhaps you'll notice the color looks off. When I got home I had something like 40 rolls of film and processed them all myself in batches of 6. I screwed up the chemistry in one of those batches of six and, of course, the Halley shots were in that batch... Someone just didn't want me getting any comet shots. We retraced our steps a couple of years later to reshoot some of the bad shots but of course Halley was long gone. Oh, and here's a shot of me removing the diagonal part from the C-8 the next morning in the hotel lobby: http://users.wirelessbeehive.com/~paw/temp/WOEISME-01.JPG Of course that shot was not in the bad batch. patrick _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Visit the Photo Gallery: http://www.slas.us/gallery2/main.php Visit the Wiki: http://www.utahastronomy.com
Joe,
I saw the news story about Roberts the founder of the "Cosmic Airplane", one of my past favorite book stores. His sister is a nurse whom I worked with while she lived in SLC. Erik Hi, here's the story of my misadventure at Pit'N'Pole, and a death that
makes it seem pretty trivial:
http://www.deseretnews.com/blog/47/10008686/Nightly-News-Astronomy-blog-The-...
Best wishes, Joe
_______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Visit the Photo Gallery: http://www.slas.us/gallery2/main.php Visit the Wiki: http://www.utahastronomy.com
He was a really interesting and intelligent guy. We were great pals at the U. He ran into serious personal problems that I've heard ended the Cosmic Aeroplane, but he got his demons under control and was doing well as far as I know. Bruce was working at the U. of U. Press and he recommended my book about Revolutionaries and their daguerreotypes to the Press. The last I heard about it, around two months ago, is that the Press wants to publish it but needed peer reviewers to take a look. I couldn't come up with peer reviewers and asked Bruce about it but he didn't answer. Now I know why. -- Joe ________________________________ From: "erikhansen@TheBlueZone.net" <erikhansen@TheBlueZone.net> To: Utah Astronomy <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Fri, March 19, 2010 10:00:57 AM Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] An awful astronomy expedtion
Joe,
I saw the news story about Roberts the founder of the "Cosmic Airplane", one of my past favorite book stores. His sister is a nurse whom I worked with while she lived in SLC. Erik Hi, here's the story of my misadventure at Pit'N'Pole, and a death that
makes it seem pretty trivial:
http://www.deseretnews.com/blog/47/10008686/Nightly-News-Astronomy-blog-The-...
Best wishes, Joe
_______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Visit the Photo Gallery: http://www.slas.us/gallery2/main.php Visit the Wiki: http://www.utahastronomy.com
_______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Visit the Photo Gallery: http://www.slas.us/gallery2/main.php Visit the Wiki: http://www.utahastronomy.com
participants (4)
-
Chuck Hards -
erikhansen＠TheBlueZone.net -
Joe Bauman -
Patrick Wiggins