At 10:20 PM -0800 11/29/98, Robert Preston wrote:
>...

I sure wish there was a Mac version of this program! My wife recently got
a Windows machine from her employer to use at home but so far I've managed
to contain the cyber-pollution to her area of the house. I'm not sure what
would happen if I actually tried to use it. But damn it, LunarGOTO sounds
like a wonderful toy!

>Lunar GOTO and Rukl make the moon a more interesting place to explore.
>But I have to say, I had to give up on the standard star diagonal and instead
>use a non-reversing 45 degree diagonal. The 45 degree angle is a bit of a
>pain, but much less painful than trying to compare non-reversed Rukl charts
>with the reversed images seen with the standard diagonal.

I've been struggling with this for a while with limited success. I think
there must be two kinds of astronomers; I'm in the category that lacks the
mirror-imaging chip in my brain. Is there such a thing as a 2" 45 degree
diagonal?

>It seems that the 57.9 Hz tracking frequency recommended in the user manual
>for lunar work must be an average that is not always optimal.

Right. The Moon's orbit is elliptical enough that it really matters.

>I found that
>the scope drifted away from the chosen lunar feature after a few minutes,
>but it would re-center the feature if I hit GOTO again....

It would be an easy and kewl feature for LunarGOTO to simply do the GOTO
again every minute or so. Or even fancier, it could slew to a prominent
crater, instruct you to wait until the Moon had drifted by the width of
that crater and then calculate and set the right frequency.
---
Bill Arnett "Quantum Mechanics:
Emerald Hills, CA 37N 122W the dreams stuff is made of"

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