Another Atari Achievement...

This is one for the, "You can't do squat with those dumb old computers" file... I picked up a book at a thrift today, called, NEW HORIZONS IN AMATEUR ASTRONOMY by Grant Fjermedal (C) 1989. Before I got out of the first chapter I read this excellent little tidbit: "...David Gedalia, of California's San Fernando Valley, attracted a lot of attention by day and night with his 10-inch reflector on a servo-controlled Dobsonian mount. This was set up near the back of his pickup truck on the upper field, and on the tailgate of the truck was a simple 64K Atari 800 computer running a star finding program that Gedalia had written himself. He had all the objects from Messier (the classic catalog of 104 prominent galaxies, nebulae, and other objects identified in the late 1700s) and several hundred other objects from the more voluminous New General Catalog. It was so nice at night to see him enter a Messier number, hit "Return" and listen to the purr of the servos as they positioned the object right in the center of the eyepiece field..."