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OK, I admit it, I'm a trekkie. I have to say at this point though that I have not and never plan to go to a star trek museum,
convention, learn klingon, buy the dvd/video boxset or dress up as the characters. It's a good TV show, but that's where it ends.
Also, Star Wars sucks.
Now I have that out of the way, at various times in the past I've found myself lying on the ground at night, mainly whilst too drunk
to walk, looking up at the stars. In Jan 2003 I decided to take things to the next level and bought myself a telescope.
After much research I ended up with a Meade ETX 70AT, a 325mm focal length 70mm refractor on an alt azimuth mount with twin motor
drives and an
onboard computer. It's a nice little scope with good optics, sadely let down by an appature a bit to small for the light polluted
area I live in. The reason I bought it and not a larger appeature newtonian reflector, other than the fact that i'm a sucker for
electronic displays is that I travel about and needed something which I can get in a rucksack/take home to my parents house on
the train during the summer.
So anyway, part of the reason i bought this scope was that I knew I could get a good return for it on ebay, once i'd either decided
that astronomy sucks or I want to invest in something bigger. In August 2003 I sold it on ebay for 40 quid more than i bought it
for originally. It served it's purpose admirably, I've used the money to invest in another hobby and having had it to play with for
6 months I know now that when i'm earning a proper salary I want to buy a several thousand pound scope and take it up as a serious
hobby.
In the meantime I run SetiAtHome on my machines and servers, which downloads and analyses radio telescope data for extra terrestial
signals, the uploads the results. With several million home users the computers working parallel currently are twice as powerful
as the world's largest supercomputer. You can check my progress
here.
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