I can drive (good for nothing else anyway). U bring ur M16, CompMac do ur Computations for the next event so deepyu can be outside his house `accidently testing' when we surprise him. 
We can give deepyu his very own `Halo".

No problem. Just bring some honey and salt. I'll know what to do with it when we 'fetched' him.
I think that's where the Arecibo Radio Observatory is located. The dish where SETI information is collected. Deep inside the jungle lies the biggest satellite dish in the world.

Your friend is a local distributor of Meade Telescopes? Care to intro him/her to me? I'm seriously thinking of getting one.

not fair arr..mine is dv..u'll got digicam ..err..film SLR can count or not?

i think we hold back the F16 unless deepyu get the APGM ppl to help him. THEN we launch the F16 wipe them out totally!

Ask the pilot to just do a flyover of deepyu's house as a friendly warning lah.

It's impossible to get both the normal Moon and Mars exposed correctly in the same frame due to the disparity in their brightness. Pics showing both seemly correctly exposed are either superimposed one on the other, or done with selective contrast/brightness editing. It's getting too easy to `cheat'.

i cannot fight the lone ranger, he's my hero.......sorry guys, i lay down my arms. 

u see Mr.LKM's Red Dot u better duck - that's the laser targeting of the M16!

Maybe yes maybe not i'll say yes when i found it..

just a reminder that there're only 4 days left!
Still no shots of the god of war yet? anybody?

i think so. 

the other planets in our Solar System are named after characters of Roman (& Greek) Mythology.

for example:
Mercury - god of commerce and travel, the winged messenger
Venus - goddess of Love
Mars - god of war
Jupiter - aka Zeus, king of gods
Saturn - god of agriculture; aka Cronus, father of Jupiter
Neptune - god of the sea
Uranus - the earliest god, god of heaven, father of Saturn

Under dispute for classification as a `planet'
Pluto - aka Hades, god of the underworld
Xena - she's famous enough lah!

i will, provided u don't lend him ur M16 & F16. i takut nanti kena shoot balik.

Exams over? 

Great, then u can stay up late  'cause tonite's THE night to start shooting!
Our god of war will not come so close for the next 13 years! 

the beautiful thing is that Mars will be up nearly all night tonite!
It will clear the horizon in the East at around 7.40 pm, stroll through the night sky, passing overhead about 2.00 am, and then disappear in the West after sunrise!

Plenty of time to take photos, provided the clouds don't get in the way as usual.

Watch out for the huge dust storms which started just over a week ago. Mars is certainly putting on a jolly good show this time round.

That's a fair view of the difference between the two designs. I tend to think of the Newtonian as the keep-at-home-telescope and the M. Cassegrain as a take-everywhere-telescope.   

trust William C.  to come up with the goodies as usual with his very very slow SCT..... Where did he go to take those 900 shots? Ulu Yam ah?

I spent the whole night out from 10.30pm to sunrise this morning enjoying Mars from my garden, the sky for once was excellent by KL city standards! Also rewarded with a nice old Moon with significant earthshine! If the weather holds up, it's another sleepless night for me tonite......

that's what i mean when i said the Newtonian design (BTW, i am not refering to the brand or model) is a keep-at-home telescope.
It is a great telescope to have for DSO (in the short focal length incarnation), but if u live in the urban areas like most of us do, then there's obviously a limit to what u can see with it except on rare nights. If i had to bundle it into the car and drive a hundred kilometers away from civilisation to use it at its full potential, then i don't think i will be using it much. Penangites will beg to differ....

The reason why the Catadioptics are selling like hotcakes (again, any brand) is because of their wider range of applications for everyday use. If i only could afford to buy ONE telescope in the less than RM10,000 range, then my choice would be down to a Maksutov-Cassegrain-very portable, or a 8" Schmidt-Cassegrain (like what William C uses)-not as portable, but really excellent performance for the money. Both are great for Astro and Terrestrial photography.

A good solid equatorial mount would be a nice accessory if i want to do a lot of astrophotography, but personally, i don't have the nights for it, being a Klang Valley working class citizen. Maybe when I retire.....

Of course, most serious astronomy enthusiasts will end up having more than one telescope after their first one: fast and slow reflector/refractor, large SCT, solarscope, the list is endless if the pocket is big enough.

then go and collect your angpow lar..now raya+deepavali rite?
u surely can earn some more $$$