Well I have been subscribed to Universe Today at one email or another for 5 years now. I have been kind of putting off signing up on the message board long enough so iI am finally doing it. I don't know if the picture thing is going to work or not, as I am having user error trouble with my computer :blink: but I will give it a try.

Hi SpaceCase

On behalf of everyone here, welcome to the UT forums

I was about to say "I hope you find it interesting and informative" but you obviously do or else you wouldn't have joined in the first place LOL

(Sometimes my powers of deduction amaze even me)

Have fun

__________________
"The stars are my home"
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe... Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion... I've watched c-beams glitter in the dark, near the Tanhauser Gate... all those moments will be lost, in time... like tears in the rain..."

Thanks for the welcome! yep I am finding it interesting and informative... just kicking myself for waiting so long to sign up. I've been into astronomy since I was a little kid, like 3 yrs old. ok back then it was because i was terrified of the moon... it kept chasing me! what does a 3 yr old know of parallax (sp?). But my parents took me to the Griffith park observatory at 4 yrs old and it was on from there! I have had a good many adventures, trips and experiences since then...thanks to America's best ever high school teacher, Mr. Mike Hanlon at Palmdale High School, Palmdale, CA... and my parents. We had a great field trip one year to a jet propulsion lab, and another place where we got to see a mass spectrometer, a laser in use, an electron microscope, and a mission control center too. it was just awesome. I now have a teensy weensy pathetic telescope, but hope for a better one soon. I have some 10x50 binoculars that are pretty good and I can see pretty ok with them. I picked up a blue smudge in andromeda the other night... like a star had gotten smeared... not sure if it was the galaxy though. still cool. I am raising a new generation of space nuts... I have 5 kids... and they love sitting out under a pitch black sky going oooh aaah with mom...and they all know why they better not turn on that porch light if I have my binoculars haha. We actually had the cops investigate us in December when we were watching the Geminids... They thought we were nuts when they learned what we were doing. He just drove off shaking his head. Don't worry about "not realizing the obvious", somedays I don't know if i am standing there because I came to sit down or if I just got up... :P :blink:

You are gonna sure fit in here!

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Pre-Quote: 'To survive one has to experiment. When the environment changes, the traditional way of doing things doesn't work.'

Quote:
"It's the outriders, the organisms that seem to be maladjusted before the change, which are the only ones that survive these changes...in that way a species continues."

Carl Sagan