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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple style='word-wrap:break-word'><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div><div style='border:none;border-top:solid #E1E1E1 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in'><p class=MsoNormal><b>From:</b> spike@rainier66.com <spike@rainier66.com> <br><b>Subject:</b> RE: [ExI] astonishing<o:p></o:p></p></div></div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'>>…That megabyte salt-ice imager looked cool and sexy at the time but I chose to not buy one. I had a tracker and a scope (200 mm catadioptric) but didn’t buy that camera or the 80 MB drive, thinking they might go thru the same dramatic improvement in performance as computers had been doing for the past several years (that part was right, they did.)<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'>>…Apologies, must interrupt once again, reality is bugging me to take care of it. spike<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'>OK. My friend Wayne was fooling with photometry imaging with water-ice rock salt cooling along with the tracker, scope and drive capable of storing about 75 images, all of it together cost about 4000 bucks, which would get you a new low-end car in those days.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'>Suddenly, 30 years went by. We figured out how to do some things better. Now, we are able to make as many digital images as we want, far far superior to anything we could do back then regardless of how much money we had. These cameras which do this are about the size of a pea (!), and can be produced in mass quantities for a cost of about 3 dollars each (!) The phone (!) on which the data is stored (!) holds so many images, we don’t even bother going back thru and erasing old ones. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'>A software package eliminates the need for a tracker (itself over a thousand dollar item if you get a good quiet one.) The software somehow figures out what images are stars, are streaking over the exposure time and will undo that effect. That software is free.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'>With that setup we can make better images than anything we could even buy back in the olden days.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'>Is this a great time to be alive or what?<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'>spike<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'> <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div></div></body></html>