starstuff
completed this goal
How I did it: Perched on my dining room table (like a three legged bird) is the telescope. My telescope! It stares blindly at the wall with its giant, cycloptic eye.
I have wanted a telescope ever since Jon showed me his sister's. He pointed the white tube at the moon and I looked through the lens... I had never seen the moon that way before. I'd seen photographs, but they were nothing compared to seeing it with my own eyes. I had a real sense of the earth as a planet, suspended in space and dancing with this white friend.
(The moon is so dazzling that when I finally took my eye away from the eye piece, the right side of my vision was obscured by a white blur.)
My telescope (as hinted at before) is a table top telescope. It has short little legs and will sit on the green plastic garden table outside. I will sit on the green plastic garden chairs to use it. I hope to attach it to a proper stand once my health improves enough for me to be able to stand properly too, but until then this should work well for me.
Unfortunately my health has dipped rather a lot since November so I haven't been able to use it yet. No doubt I will write about it when I do - and I am pretty sure you can attach a camera to the telescope too, and so take pictures down the lens!
The BBC Sky At Night Magazine gave this review:
“Its design is that of a traditional astronomical telescope…but its also suitable for watching wildlife. Focusing was with the traditional rack and pinion assembly, which was smooth to use. The lowest power eyepiece (25mm) provided a x16 magnification, which gave an estimated field of view of 2.5 degrees. Stars remained sharp across 75% of the view. With this eyepiece, widefield views were particularly good; open cluster M44 was a delight. These wide views did seem to make the background sky lighter, but we could still make out the brighter Messier objects and even spotted the galaxy NGC 2903 in Leo. At higher magnifications the galaxy group of M65/M66 and NGC 3628 could be seen, and by adding the Barlow lens to the 10mm eyepiece we split Algieba and Castor… Saturn was also clear, with Tian and Rhea visible. Overall score 87%”
Read how I did it… 2 weeks ago
15 cheers . 2 comments . Comment
This Christmas I asked for a telescope. I spent yesterday scouring the internet, and have narrowed it down to two choices.
The first was recommended to me by a man from the local astronomy group (I haven’t been but they have a forum online) and the second I found based on his advice (don’t go with the standard 60mm lenses if you’re buying a refractor – get an 80 if you can).
I started this account two years ago talking about telescopes.
Jingle bells, here we go! 2 months ago
