Advertising land

[Geoff45]

I'd love to move to advertising land where:
Mounts are always rock solid
Stars are always pinpoint right across the field
Tracking is always sub arcsecond
Hubble style pictures are just a click away with your new beaut camera
Image processing is effortless (with AstroFX software)
All this at an affordable price.

[cybereye]

"Follow the yellow-brick road, Follow the yellow-brick road, Follow, Follow..." :)

[jjjnettie]

:) I don't know if I'd want things as easy as that. One may as well just download Hubble pics off the net.
Getting all your gear to work together in harmony is all part of the fun/challenge. :)

[bojan]

Yes...
Looooong time ago I was interested in radio-amateurism..
The biggest fun of all was to design and build own radio-transciever.
But the fun was spoilt and actually destroyed (for me) by availability of commercial radios - they were good, (relatively) cheap, and they worked out of the box, so everyone just bought equipment, and after a bit of fiddling with antennas, you were on air, talking with almost anyone across Atlantic (money always wins) .
This is why I never became ham-radio enthusiast.

[Larryp]

Bojan, you just reminded me, when I was young I used to get hold of 'Radio, Television and Hobbies" magazine-later to be called "Electronics Australia" and build some of their circuit designs. Mostly I built stereo amps, and they came up with some very good designs, too.:)

[Geoff45]

Actually I was having a go at the rubbish advertisers put out rather than wishing they were true.

[Larryp]

Sorry Geoff-getting off topic there. I understand what you are saying. Advertisers make all sorts of claims, but reality is quite different.:)

[bojan]

Yep, I realised that..
It's just you started some pretty chaotic process in my brain, resulting in OT comment.
But.. Ads promote commercialism.. and, ultimatelly at the end, noone does anything,evreyone buys everything.. so we are at JJJ's comment (buying Hubble time to take pictures).. so where is amateurism in all this? Perhaps in the fact that no money is made by amateurs..
OT again. sorry.. ;)

[Stardrifter_WA]

Despite all the advertising hype you have to admit that there is some amazing gear out there. Looking back through old S&T mags makes one realise that we truly live in an era of wonder, particularly with the advent of the CCD. Without the CCD's the amateur community would not be able to produce pro level imagining, or at least, as easily.

Amateur astronomy is going ahead in leaps and bounds, so are the claims all that unrealistic? Not if you compare it with equipment from 20 years ago; or indeed, from only a few years ago. The quality and price of optics is far ahead now to what was available 20 years ago. Once upon a time we had to build our own telescopes. That is fine if you like actually building things but wasn't fine for those that wanted to partake but didn't have the skills to build there own.

We share the laboratory with professionals and now we can actually make serious contributions, if one desires to do so.

I am glad I am alive at this time in history! We are fortunate indeed!

Cheers Pete. :)