From: "David Illig" <usenet@davidillig.com>

Date: November 21, 2006 12:17:00 PM MST

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: new firewire Italian camera


David wrote:

And Nebulosity, a very nice image processing app, is now available  

for the Mac as a Universal Binary.


Milton Aupperle replied:

Have you seriously used it? It relies on qt for the porting layer  

which is why the controls are all big and funky.


Then Jeff Phillips wrote:

Maybe we're looking at two different versions of Nebulosity,  

because I don't see anything "big and funky" about it.


Now we're quibbling. Milton, you say checkbox, I say chequebox.

To be honest, I have noticed that Nebulosity works well, but I have

not noticed big and clunky check boxes. Not saying they're not

there (it's not on this Mac, and I'm not going to go and look,) just

that I'm not likely to notice such a thing unless it's really odd so

long as the software works for me.


I guess all the DSO images that I and other have taken

don't count?


Don't get me wrong -- I vote with my pocketbook, and I have bought

Astro IIDC for Solar System and other imaging. But does a webcam

with Astro IIDC count for DSO images compared to a CCD camera or

even a good DSLR? I don't think so. Pushing the envelope is fun, and

I've seen some surprisingly good DSO images from Astro IIDC and

webcams, but there is a qualifier: "Very nice, considering..."


And no, I don't think that amateur astronomy is bigger than medical

imaging/microscopy/other scientific imaging. But the latter still represents

a comparative niche. Count all the FW-equipped instruments and then

count all of the digital cameras in the hands of consumers. That's what

I mean by comparative niche.


David