Gianni QUARRA #201
Letters to the Editor
from
Gianni QUARRA SACCO
in CMO #200 & #201
I have just returned from my interesting trip to Japan last weekend and
from today I am back to my regular work.
I would like to thank you very much for the nice opportunity you gave me to
meet some of the CMO members early this year in Fukui. I have been very well
impressed by the planetary imaging work made by Mr. Akutsu and Mr. Higa.
I feel very excited about the meeting and hope we will have other chances to
compare our works in the future.
I would be glad to you if you could ask Mr. Higa to send me copy of his
wonderful tapes of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn in Hi8 NTSC media instead of the
VHS one, because I now have a Sony Hi8 camera which can read also NTSC tapes
and it can release much better color and resolution compared to standard VHS.
A tape with 30 minutes registration for each planet (90 min. total) will be
OK.
Furthermore I will be sending to you Mr. Tanga's 1997 Mars observations this
week. I will close for now and look forward to hearing from you this year.
(19 January 1998 email)
I received the CMO issue #199 and was very pleased to see the report of
the 6th workshop of the CMO. I also visited your website and we now have a
link to your site in our SGPG web-page. . . . . .
On February 15 I will depart for a business trip in USA and will meet Don
Parker sometime between February 18-22 during my stay in Miami.
Thank you for your help, hope everything is going well with you. I look
forward to your kind reply.
(10 February 1998 email)
Thank you for your reply. . . . . I'm not sure to get info before my departure,
so please tell Mr. Akutsu that I will respond to him after my return from US
trip (early March).
I will certainly extend your regards to Don and will also ask him to send
you his work on Mars 1996/97. Have you received the drawings from Mr. Tanga?
I told him to send you the drawings soon, because I cannot find the copies
he gave to me and he promised to send new copies to you very soon.
Look forward to hearing from you again,
(11 February 1998 email)
Thank you for your prompt reply. Please tell Mr. Akutsu that an English
version of the Mips software (QMIPS as well) is available too. I wonder why
he got the French version which is more difficult to understand for him.
I shall extend your regards to Carlos as well and if we get some interesting
images from Miami I'll send them to you after my return to Firenze.
Please remember Mr Higa about the VHS or Hi8 (NTSC) copy of his wonderful
videos of the planets. I'll be waiting to receive them by March.
(12 February 1998 email)
This is to inform you that I finally got the VHS tape from Higa-san, thank
you. The quality of the copy is not so impressive as the original was.
Probably because the resolution and chrominance are worse in the VHS
standard, and also because I am using a PAL videorecorder with NTSC playback
function, which is not so good as using an NTSC videorecorder.
We will use this tape for our planetary seminar, but I would ask you to kindly suggest
Mr. Higa to send me also an Hi8 NTSC copy of the tape which I could playback
with my Sony videocamera (which has an NTSC compatibility). As I understood
Mr. Higa has some problems to make a Hi8 copy of his digital recordings, I
would be glad to refund him the expenses of the Hi8 tape copy if he needs to
use a professional service center to do so. If Mr. Higa tells you that he
can make the Hi8 copy for me, please let him know that we need to receive
the tape within the end of April.
Anyway please tell Mr. Higa that if the making of the Hi8 tape is too
trouble for him, no problem, we will use the VHS tape.
Furthermore I want to confirm you that during my trip to Miami I had the
chance to meet Parker and Hernandez (but not to observe with them because of
the weather conditions) and they thank you very much for your regards.
I told them that you are interested to receive their contributes for the last
Mars opposition and they gave me a copy for you of the 1996-1997 results of
the Mars- Watch program by ALPO, which I will be sending to you TOMORROW by
mail together with some Mars drawings made by Paolo Tanga and another
Italian observer.
I send you also 3 photo shots of my meeting with Don and Carlos. The guy
with the blue T-shirt is my friend Plinio which is also a planetary observer.
Carlos is the one with a white shirt.
Photo 1: From left to right: QUARRA, PLINIO and PARKER with a 40cm Meade
in February 1998 at Miami
Photo 2: Don PARKER and Carlos HERNANDEZ
-- Photo by Gianni QUARRA
Concluding, I will be waiting for your kind answer and remain yours
sincerely,
(12 Marach 1998 email)
More details about our meeting (Plinio and me) with Don & Carlos.
We met
at the Miami Planetarium in the afternoon and then drove to Don's house
where he showed us his equipment (telescope, CCD cameras & PC). He is using
a 16" Meade SC which he has mostly modified, because his 16" Newtonian is
too big and difficult to handle, still he prefers the Newtonian because of
the better images and drive accuracy. Matter the fact he used his 16"
Newtonian for most of his Mars 1997 CCD images.
We talked a lot and Plinio
and me took the chance to show to Don and Carlos the Italian made planetary
CCD camera which Don will be using for evaluation during 1998.
Unfortunately
we could not observe because of the cloudy weather (this is the second time
I met Don and still could not make any observations together), although most
of the planets were invisible in February and I wonder if any observations
was possible.
Then Don took us to dinner to an Italian restaurant that
Plinio and me enjoyed very much. During dinner we kept talking about many
different topics. Later we left the two friends and I decided to meet them
again possibly on February 1999 at the annual Winter Star Party of Key Largo.
(13 March 1998 email)
Giovanni A QUARRA SACCO (Firenze, Italy) : mc7977@mclink.it