Pat, I'm sure that David Monet will assign to Bill one USNO-B.1.
So it will be our interest to ask him if he could make the same thing he
did with GSC-ACT.
I'm involved mainly in MP work and I don't agree at all with David about
the fact that it is not so useful for "normal" work.
I have actually 1 120 Gb HD on my PC, where I have ALL USNO-A.2, GUIDE8,
GSC-ACT, The Sky 4 and RealSky permanently loaded. I'm ready to buy a
second HD of 80 Gb or more, in order to have the USNO-B.1 constantly available.
At 157 Frasso Sabino Observatory we are in your same situation, without
high speed connection to the web, so such a solution could be very pleasant.
I hope that there will be enough people, as non professional Observatories
involved in MP work, asking for such a facility.
I'm sure that like me everyone would be ready to pay at least the expenses
and postage to USNO or Bill, whoever.
Who agrees with me?
I think many people, so, Pat, wait a minute before burning 160 or 100 CDs,
may be this will be useless.
Clear skies

Andrea Pelloni
157 Frasso Sabino
RHP SpaceGuard Team

At 14.19 14/01/03 -0600, you wrote:

> Bill wrote:
> **************************
>I bet in 5 or 10 years 80 GB will not seem that big at all. I remember
>spending over $1700 for a 200 megabyte hard drive. I think that was in
>the late 80's. The only reason I got such a "bargain" was that the owner
>of the computer store liked me. Full retail would have been about $2000
>at that time. I'll bet within a decade not only could the data be
>distributed on DVDs, but that many people will be able to find room for 80
>GB on their hard drives.
>As far as "usefulness," my observatory is in a rural setting, and the
>phone connection is not that great. There is no "cable" out there, so
>forget high speed modems. Maybe one day I will be able to afford a
>satellite system that will enable me to access the net at a reasonable
>speed. For people in my situation, distribution on 9 DVD-Rs would
>definitely be "useful."
>I have a high-speed connection here at work, and a CD-burner on my
>computer. I am starting to wonder how big a piece of sky I could put on a
>CD. I.e., how much sky can you get, say, in 500 megabytes. Nobody uses
>our system at night, so downloading some chunks of data at night would not
>harm the business effectiveness of the computer network. I could probably
>get the whole data set onto 160 CDs. Maybe even 100 CDs, if I decide I
>really don't care about anything within 35 degrees of the south celestial
>pole. Am I the only one to think such devious thoughts? Or are others
>figuring out ways to get their hands on USNO-B.1?
> Pat

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]