Len from Louisiana, USA

I joined the site a couple of months back, but am just getting around to checking it out (been busy!). I've never been to the UK, but would like to visit someday and fill up a few dozen memory cards in my camera (I'm interested in all things English). From what I've learned online, my dad's family goes back to County Cork, Ireland about five generations ago so there's a tenuous almost-there link of sorts! I now live in central Louisiana -- a small-ish town of about 14,000 population named Pineville -- and work with computers for a living.  I'm looking forward to what I'll learn here.

Wish you well and hope you find out about your family history.

Glad you enjoy the site.

 Barbara

Hi!  This site really is nice.  I like to look at other photos from where I visited.  I've only been to Enland once but hope to go back again.

Maybe your England trip will be soon!

Sharon

Hi Len

Welcome to a great website, may you enjoy every second that it has you hooked.

Hi Len

Enjoy what POE has to offer, it's a great website.  Have you posted any pics of where you live, it would be nice to see.

Karen

> Have you posted any pics of where you live,it would be nice to see.

No, I haven't - Being that this is "Pictures of England", I never considered putting any pictures of Pineville, Louisiana, USA here!

However, if you're interested, I'll try to put some on my PBase page (http://www.pbase.com/lphilpot/). Right now, there are only a very few images taken around where I live, but I'll try to add some more as I can. It's raining right now (not that you would know anything about that! ), but when the weather improves I'll try to take some more photos, particuarly as Spring arrives.

Thanks!

It would be fun to see where you live, I know you can post pictures here on the forum, though when I tried I did something wrong and POE had to come and sort it out. You could give it a try though.

It would be fun to post a picture of the town I live in, I have one taken from the mountain, a dot of buildings surrounded by sand dunes and nothing, nothing, nothing for hundreds of miles.

"nothing, nothing, nothing for hundreds of miles" - Sounds like my kind of place! Even though the place in which I live isn't large (two towns divided by a river, about145,000 total population in the area) I still very much like to get out into the wide open spaces. That's why I love southwest Texas (one county out there has an average population density of 1 person per square mile; then again, it is a big Texas county with only one town in it ).

For now, you can see some shots taken around my current "hometown"  at http://www.pbase.com/lphilpot/, although there are basically none of the town itself. I'll have to fix that when the weather improves.

Anyway, I've apparently inadvertently hijacked this POE thread with comments about locations in the USA, so I'll stop now.

Hi Len - Welcome to the site!
I really enjoyed looking through your pbase pictures, particularly the astronomy ones. Those star parties look a lot of fun
Made me dream again of having my own scope someday and seeing the planets closer up, and things like the horsehead nebula with my own eyes instead of just in pictures, that must be an amazing experience. Have you ever done any astrophotography? Some amazing looking kit you have there. How long did it take to build the 14.5" telekit?

Hope you enjoy the site

IMO, star parties are a blast, especially the Texas Star Party. There are a number of them in the UK as well, including the Kiedler Forest Star Camp (http://www.richarddarn.demon.co.uk/starcamp/) and others. That just happens to be the only one I can recall offhand. Google is your friend. :-)

There are a few more pictures on my website at http://philpot.org 

You certainly don't need a large scope to see many amazing things, particularly for the planets. Bigger/larger/better is always "better" in a relative sense, but you can do a lot with a little, as long as you're willing to put in a modicum of effort.

The Horsehead is one of those objects that photographs very well, but is pretty difficult to see visually, even in a larg-ish scope. I've seen it in a 10" scope, but only from very dark skies. And, it wasn't photographic in appearance at all. Just a small "black on black" oval shape was the best my eyes could register. However, there are lots of nice bright objects that DO look magnificent. Amateur astronomy is in some ways a re-defining of "faint", "large", "small", "bright" and several other adjectives.

I've never done any astrophotography, although I would find it interesting. It's one of those branches of astronomy that has more of a definite "minimum requirement" for success than just purely visual observing. There's still a wide range from low to high, price-wise, but I've just never invested the time, money and effort to go after it. 

The TeleKit is literally a kit (http://www.astrosystems.biz/telekits.htm) that is precut to match your optics, but virtually unassembled save a few smaller parts. It's a very interesting project, and you'll get to know slow-cure epoxy quite well! I built mine over the course of about 9 months, but that was partly due to my schedule and the slow arrival of a few components. If you had everything on hand and the time to spend, it could be done in a week or less, possibly, allowing for epoxy-curing time.