Astronomy

No more to report, still no reply to my email, but I did note that the number of hits on this blog went up considerably after I posted about Carina, but no one has commented about what they think of Carina, scam, screw up, whether their software is any good or not? I would like to hear if anyone has any thoughts on them as their Voyager package looks to offer some facilities I would like to make use of. Please let me know if you have any views.

Or just a marketing ploy that got ludicrously out of hand? Unsurprisingly they haven't troubled themselves to reply to my email so I have no more information than I had earlier in the week. It may be a little unfair to call it a scam as there is a product within the deal which looks very good but the bottom line is that I wasted 6+ hours to get hold of this product and it would appear that there was never any prospect of getting it for the price the offer claimed. I was on the site by about 13.00 US Eastern time, so just after half way through the day and, effectively, the offer had been pulled, without any indication to that effect, which has many of the hallmarks of a scam.

If they had come back to me and said, in so many words, 'we screwed up', well that would have been fair enough, this sort of thing happens, or if the website had indicated that the offer had been closed due to the unexpected level of demand, then I wouldn't have gone through the tortuous download and install.

Longest duration Solar Eclipse until 2132 will commence 00.55 GMT 22 July, the feed is from Guwahati, India. Struggling to find exactly what time the feed goes live, it gives time as PST but I think it will kick off 00.15 GMT.

Not sure what happened with Carina yesterday? Would like to hear if anyone successfully got hold of the software on offer? I managed to get a copy of Voyager downloaded about midnight yesterday, after two hours I left it still unpacking and went to bed, completed the installation this morning but the purchase option via the website is still unavailable and there is no purchase option within the install process or when you run the program. So as far as I can see there was no option to get the software at the offer price from some time before I went on to their site around 16.00 yesterday afternoon, meaning that I wasted 6+ hours trying to get this software without any possibility of getting it at the offer price. I have emailed Carina along these lines saying 'WTF', in so many words and waiting to hear back. Not holding my breath.

They seem to have ironed out there hosting problems and downloads are available again, though mine is progressing very slowly with the 600Mb file projected to take another 4 hours at the present rate!

Probably a bit late but Carina Software are giving away some of their products today and offering others for 1c, got a few problems with the demand at the moment but might be worth a look.

http://www.carinasoft.com/index.html

I'm still waiting for friend to come back to me with the filter holder. Starting to wonder if he hasn't started again from scratch, I wouldn't put it past him, I know he'll be really annoyed at not having it right first time. I don't like to pester him but it's been a month since I last heard from him and I have a lot of time on my hands still and want to be doing things! I suppose I should be doing things any way, my already limited knowledge of the night must be slipping away but I had decided on a course of action and I'm reluctant to give it up.

Had another poke around for my observing log on my reconstituted desktop PC and backups but still can't find it, which continues to grate, but need to be doing something so I think I will have to email my woodworking friend and prod him as subtly as I can.