From: Mark Gaffney <markgaffney@me.com>

Date: January 10, 2010 7:46:53 PM MST

To: astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com, sct-user@yahoogroups.com, Celestron_AS@yahoogroups.com, macastronomer@yahoogroups.com

Subject: milky way..

For a long time last night the "dust lanes" of the Milky Way were on spectacular view here! I waited`til about 12.30am when Orion was past the meridian to set-up but am looking at a 3 star & then a polar alignment at the moment first.(after the all rain we had recently) In the meantime I spent some time sorting out my cables (which were in a mess!) I`d planned to begin with Metaguide`s collimation option & needed the monitor etc. outside for that on it`s long cables. Then I got tied up for a while with my VNC connections. I can have the screen of my iBook laptop outside visible & controllable on either the Mac Mini or the PC by Airport so in theory should be able to control things from inside once set-up. I looked out & visibility wasn`t quite as good by this time & Orion was dipping towards my tall western trees. So in the end got things fairly ready but didn`t get any practical astronomy done. It`d be nice to have the reverse remote desktop of the PC onto the laptop outside so I could see Metaguide next to the scope for focusing purposes but it seems Apple have pandered to the PC community with Leopard but this hasn`t been reciprocated. The only PC-Mac VNC control I`ve seen so far costs $4950 for a one year licence..!

Mark.