Palm Astro Mailing List Home Page!

Rod's

Palm Astronomy Page

(And Home Page for the Palm Astro Mailing list)

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BACKGROUND:

I'll readily admit that I did not buy my Palm IIIxe for use at the telescope. I bought it because I realized that it was pretty ridiculous for a technical professional to be storing his telephone numbers in an old Star Wars telephone book! I set out to get a handheld computer, and the Palm was the natural choice. Loving gadgets, I was obviously attracted to the Pocket PC. But the price, battery life and operating system steered me back to the Palm. But which Palm? The color IIIc certainly looked cool (and so did the rumored M405). But, the best value of all seemed to be the IIIxe. 8mb of ram and a nice sized screen made this Palm very attractive. So did the price. When I bought mine, the IIIxe was being phased out in favor of the newer M series.

I was very happy with my Palm for business tasks from day one. But how about astronomy? No, I hadn't bought the Palm for astronomy, but I'm NOT going to have a computer without some astro software on it! I quickly discovered some very interesting and useful astronomy apps for the Palm and have been enjoying them immensely. Recently, for example, at the 2001 Texas Star Party, I used a pair of Celestron 10x50 binoculars and the Palm to do John Wagoner's entire Binocular list, seeing dozens of beautiful sights. This experience truly convinced me that the Palm can be a valuable tool for amateurs (and astronomy educators).

What do I plan for this page? For now it's just going to be a collection of links. In the future, I hope to have lots of other stuff--reviews, projects (I'm currently working at converting game boy illuminators for use with the Palm to help alleviate the problem we monochrome user have with producing a red lit screen).

Palm Astro Mailing List Guidelines:

Palm Astro is a mailing list for the users of astronomy related software and hardware for the Palm and Pocket PC computers. Visit the Yahoogroups page at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/palmastro

General List Guidelines for Palm Astro:

I’m not big on rules, but I do have three suggestions to make which will, I think, ensure Palm Astro's continued health.

1. Be Excellent to One Another. This is not a big problem as far as I’m concerned. Amateurs have a reputation for being polite and overlooking each-others’ foibles. Let’s save the flames for usenet. The one BIG rule that I do enforce on Palm Astro? NO PERSONAL ATTACKS! Healthy debate is fine, but when it strays into this realm it's time to stop and THINK! Violating this rule is the one thing that for sure will get you in dutch with old Rod!

2. Keep the ball rollin’. If you see the traffic-flow ebb on Palm Astro, chime in with a comment or a question. It is VERY important that new subscribers see messages right away when they join!

3. Strive, as best you can, to stay on topic.

What kind of control will I exercise here? Very little. Ideally a mailing list should be self -supporting. If you have a comment or question about the list, please feel free to email me directly at RMOLLISE@aol.com (or if you just wanna talk scopes and observing…I’m always happy to chat with fellow amateurs).

Me? I (Rod) know many of you from either star parties or from being online a lot (espeically on s.a.a. and my own sct-user mailing list--also found on Yahoogroups). But if you’re curious about your host….

“I’m 47 and a Senior Systems Analyst for Northrop Grumman Aerospace. I also teach my local University’s (University of South Alabama) evening astronomy labs (two nights a week) for the Physics Department. My dear wife Dorothy is a full time professor and Department Chair at USA. Dorothy and I share a big old Victorian house in Mobile, Alabama’s historic district with my step-daughter Beth, 5 cats (the four-footed kind) and 6 telescopes.

Some of my other recent projects include a book on SCTs for Patrick Moore's Practical Astronomy Series of books that's just been published. I also recently did a lot of writing for the "Secrets of the Universe" cards (notebook pages on astronomy/space subjects...it's like an astronomy encyclopedia by subscription). You may have noticed advertisements for SOTU in the junk mail pile!