get a telescope

Stargazing being one of my favorite past-times, I am surprised I still don’t have one! i would love to have one in time for the next meteor shower:)

I asked for a Dob that I could fit in the Subaru for christmas.

some of the new dobs are really small and can go in your back seat. i’d really love to do astrophoto, but i dont think we can do it in the sticks.

i wish we didn’t have such light pollution here.

what i really want is a schmidt-cassegrain ot a takahashi 5” apo. but, life sucks :(

at the moment. Possibly never will be. So I won’t get rid of the goal altogether. I’ll just give it up for now. I’ll get one some day—hopefully before my eyesight goes… :)

hoe do I get one

What I really wanted was a good scope with a stardrive for astrophotography. Not going to happen any time soon unless I suddenly hit a winning lotto number – and my chances of that are greatly diminished since I consider the lotto a tax on those who don’t understand basic statistics!

still not accomplished.

A few years ago we were at Mammoth in California’s eastern Sierra Nevada range. The perfect spot for sky gazing is Deer Mountain, reachable by dirt road about 15 miles NNE of Mammoth. All the surrounding mountain ranges are less than a degree above the horizon. The summit is over 8,000 feet. The nearest city lights of any significance are Fresno’s, on the other side of the Sierrras, 70+ miles away.

Here’s a pic I took during the predawn hours in August. We had been up since 0200, watching the Geminid shower.

A decent pair of 10×50 binoculars work wonders when staring at the night sky. I got mine on sale at Amazon for about $50. I’ve discovered that it’s not enough to just have a ‘scope – I need a clock drive, too. But getting the whole package is worth it, I think. I want to take brilliant pictures of the sky – and someday soon I’ll do it!

My brother and I were talking about the universe the other day and it was a very profound conversation. My brother is really smart and even he is simply amazed by space… he hates that he doesn’t know and can’t get a definite answer about it… and when I see pictures of Earth, I begin to feel really small… sometimes I even drive down the road and think, man, what if gravity quit working… that would suck! ha…