OAFs Mailing List

Everyone is welcome to join our mailing list: groups.io/g/oafs

The list is not affiliated with any club (since we don’t consider OAFs a club). But all astronomy clubs and individuals are encouraged to post about their public observing events. Anyone is welcome to join the list, but newcomers may be moderated until they are known to not be spammers.

We use the mailing list to:

  • Chat about astronomy;
  • Chat about telescopes and equipment;
  • Discuss and plan where and when to have public star parties and sidewalk session;
  • Discuss and plan where and when to have private OAFs-only observing sessions;
  • Make the last-minute “go/no-go” announcements for the above events;
  • Pick a restaurant to congregate at to have periodic OAF-ish dinners;
  • Let individual OAFs make open invites to pot luck dinners;
  • Buy and sell astronomy toys;
  • Complain about the weather;
  • Make Monty-Python references.

OAFs started out as nothing more than a Yahoo! Groups mailing list for local friends to talk about astronomy and to coordinate observing events. It still remains largely a mailing list, and most discussion and information exchange continues to take place there.

We have a tradition of planning observing events by using Online Polls to allow OAFs to vote for the dates on which they’d be willing to bring telescopes to public star parties. Since we have no designated coordinators (we like it that way), everyone is encouraged to create new polls to decide where and when to observe as a group.

One thing we don’t do on the OAFs list is to discuss how to run or organize OAFs or discuss the politics that sometimes arise in clubs or volunteer organizations. For that “boring admin stuff” we have a separate mailing list called OAFuscators. Any OAF is welcome to join OAFuscators. Discussions that stray from astronomy on OAFs will be encourage to move to OAFuscators. We like to decide issues of how to run OAFs with votes in polls on OAFuscators. All moderators of the OAFs and OAFuscators mailing lists have agreed to abide by the decisions of these votes.

5 thoughts on “OAFs Mailing List”

  1. Hi
    My name is Sophia. I have a telescope and was wondering if I could get some help setting it up. I believe there is a public meeting on Aug 18. I can be there at 7pm. Can someone please help me set it up.

  2. Hi, I’m a beginner in Astronomy and I’m looking in to buying a telescope without breaking the bank. Does anyone here have a good recommendation for a telescope that’s going to give me a nice view of certain planets and the moon? I’m looking for a 70mm or over. Thanks a lot!

    1. I’m looking for some advice on the purchase of a telescope and associated equipment for the family. Type, capabilities ,Pros and cons.
      any thing will help. Price ?. Which will give us the best performance ?
      Thanks!

      Bill Colman

    2. You may be in luck.
      We have a telescope that is in perfect condition that inherited that we would like to donate to a person or society interested in astronomy.

  3. I use a Losmandy GM8 mount with 492 Digital Drives and considered adding the Losmandy Gemini 2 GoTo system – however, once imported, the cost would exceed that of a new GoTo mount from other manufacturers. My question is, has anyone had experience with Digital Setting Circle systems (like Astro Devices Nexus) on an equatorial mount?

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