On 9/9/2015 7:38 AM, wrote:
On Tuesday, September 1, 2015 at 10:01:04 PM UTC-4, Bill Owen wrote:
On 09/01/15 11:40, LdB wrote:
Let's not leave out the poor eyepiece users. They are always looking for
new ways to improve their view.

Here is a list of the new ideas and methods they have developed in the
last few generations.

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.
.
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Quite a list.


LdB.


RKE eyepieces (1979).
Nagler eyepieces (1979).
Not to mention LASIX and other surgical techniques.

Not to mention Dobsonian telescopes of large aperture/short focal length.
Also, SCTs.
Also, neb filters.
Also, more frequent star parties at dark sites.
Also, better charts.



No new ideas of methods there. Just a few design changes. The
manufacturers may have found a few ways to coax more profit out of you
poor sods but nothing else has changed.

As long as you have to use averted vision and the rest of your
antiquated techniques to look at something you are still in the dark
ages. It doesn't matter how much you spend you will never see as much
with your new and improved obsolete eyepieces as I can see with the
oldest Mallincam I own.

Why don't you just admit it. All your skill and training has done
nothing more that to condition you to accept an inferior view. The
problem is you have been brainwashed so well and for so long you are
unable to recognize the real thing when it came along.

Fortunately for newcomers there are people regularly demonstrating our
superior technology and equally as fortunate there are still people
like you regularly demonstrating how easy it is to be taken in by
overly obsessed traditionalists. Insisting that you have to see an
object with you own eyes for the experience to be real makes you sound
like some sort of religious fanatic. You believe but you don't know why.

Do your best to keep the new technology away from your dark site star
parties or keep the newcomers away if you know there will be a real
observer there with equipment to actually view the objects all of you
so dearly wish you could see.

Above all, never let it be said among yourselves that the Mallincamer
can see more from a light polluted location during the full moon than
most of you can see at your dark site at the best of times. It may
start a healing process leading a traditionalists out of the dark and
into modern astronomy.

Modern astronomy. That's the place where the better star charts come
from. Those charts are made with equipment that accurately reproduces
what it sees. Charts are no longer made with pencils, imagination and
a strong belief that the old ways are the only ways.

There has been another subtle change in the attitude of those adopting
new ideas and methods. They no longer find it necessary to insult
others with childish name calling as some traditionalists are prone to
do.

I realize that is probably a symptom of the traditionalist
brainwashing. There must be some sort of conflict going on inside
those poor misguided traditionalist minds.

The truth occasionally erodes the belief. When someone like me comes
along some truth seeps into their minds and creates havoc. The
conflict simply results in an uncontrollable outpouring of anger.
Perhaps that anger is just a disguised cry for help.

Exposure to modern astronomy might be therapeutically for some but it
might lead to a complete breakdown. A person may fall into a state
where all he can do is to contradict, criticize and deny everything in
an futile attempt to silence the truth and put an end the conflict.

LdB