Mac Lab Report

Macs in Space (er, Astronomy)

- 2005.01.12

Just visiting the American Astronomical Society meeting here in San Diego, and I wanted to pass along to all of you the observation that there are plenty of Macs here. Apple has sent up a (very popular) cyber cafe which has had people waiting at the door to use computers since I arrived.

I ran into an Apple representative, John Martellaro, who has written extensively for the Mac Web on sites like MacOpinion before joining Apple. He exhibited a Power Mac G5 with two giant Cinema Displays and was explaining the technical capabilities of the dual processor machine when I walked up and snapped his picture.

John Martellaro at AAS meeting I could not imagine having that much screen real estate to use. Well, I could imagine having it, but not affording it. ;-)

More and more professional astronomers seem to be leaning toward the Mac, and although it is a small community, I really hope it will drive some of the hardware manufacturers to provide better support for their digital camera products for the Mac.

On a related matter, I will be reviewing Starry Night's latest offering, which provides photorealistic horizons and an improved, Mac OS X-style interface in a future column.

I have to get back to work working on our proposal to use the Spitzer Infrared Space Telescope, so I'll be writing more later. Have a great week!

Jeff Adkins is a science teacher who isn't afraid to state his preferences in computing platforms. In his classroom he has everything from a beige All-in-One to a a G4 XServe, and they all work together nicely. He calls himself the "poster child for technology integration" in the classroom. He was the 2006 Outstanding Educator of the Year for the California Computer Using Educators (CUE) organization. He also maintains a site for astronomy teachers at www.AstronomyTeacher.com.

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