Astronomy
So recently, my interest in astronomy has been rekindled.
(I'm not going to bother explaining any of the astro-jargon in this post. It's long enough as it is.)
It was Mid-August. Very hot, and the kitchen was being remodeled so the house was a mess, and very dusty. We were cooking food on the grill and eating it in the backyard, which of course gave me a chance to look at the sky.
Now obviously being in the greater Los Angeles area, the sky consists mostly of two things - Smog, and light pollution; so seeing anything at all is impressive.
What I saw was unmistakably Jupiter. I looked around and spotted some obvious bright stars - Vega, Deneb and Altair, and not much else. On a whim, I went and dug out a pair of binoculars (“a binocular” to be pedantic), and had a closer look at Jupiter. I could clearly see it as a disc, not a point of light, and even make out the 4 Galilean satellites. I was somewhat impressed.
The next few nights, I happily spent a few hours lying in the garden searching for fuzzy blobs. With much persistence, and some unusually clear nights, I found both M31 and M13 with binoculars. Admittedly they are two of the brightest Messier objects, but still challenging from our back garden!
This got me to dreaming of telescope ownership (sharikkamur’s post about the Galileoscope didn’t help :) ).
So I turned to the internet for guidance. The first thing I learned was that telescope technology has come a LONG way in the last 20 years, which is when I was last keeping up to date with the hobby. I rapidly decided on my needs:
* Short setup time so if I had 30 minutes one evening I could drag it out and be observing rapidly
* Easily portable so I could take it to a dark sky site
* Good for visual astronomy (astrophotography is outside my immediate interest)
* Not Too Expensive
* I want it *NOW*
The last requirement was an issue - I know I’m liable to make foolhardy impulse purchases that I could regret, so I came up with a solution. In the short term, I would buy a “cheap” (relatively speaking) scope to prove to myself that I was going to sustain this interest, and I would hold off on a major purchase until I had much more experience.
As luck would have it, while browsing various websites I came across an advertisement for PATS2009, an astronomy expo in Pasadena held late September (last weekend). I decided going and getting “hands on” with a lot of telescopes was a good way of determining what scope suited me best. So my short-term purchase was going to last me until then, at least.
I went and bought a Meade 114EQ ASTR telescope. It’s a little above the “toy” telescope generally sold at Wal Mart and the like, but well below the threshold of being a “real” telescope.
Its good points were its price, ease of use, and optical quality. Its only bad point is the mount and tripod it comes on. The tripod is so flimsy that any time I touch the telescope, it can take 15 seconds for the vibrations to die away before I can see a steady image through the eyepiece.
Having said that, the view through the eyepiece is astounding for a cheap scope - It clearly resolved belts on Jupiter, and Epsilon Lyrae (the double-double). Even better, I took it to a local observing session in a local school’s dark parking lot, and was up and observing in 10 minutes, long before anyone else had even aligned their fancy telescopes!
So the PATS2009 event came along last weekend, and Diane and I went. All the major manufacturers and local retailers were well represented, and I had a great time looking at a huge range of telescopes.
After a lot of walking around and talking, I finally homed in on my dream telescope - an Orion Skyquest XT10 push-to Dobsonian. It covered all of my requirements and more. I was happy, and decided to order one in the near future.
One feature of the PATS expo is that all the dealers there hold raffles, also known as “door prizes” here. Every 30 minutes or so, they would announce another drawing, and everyone would wander over to the relevant stall to see who won what. During the day, we’d seen people winning software, eyepieces, little telescopes, microscopes, t-shirts and other neat items. Then at 3PM, a company called iOptron held their drawing. We were about to leave, and were on our “one last look around the show” tour when this drawing came up, and as we’d already both entered, we decided to see if we won anything.
It turns out they only had one prize, a brand-new computerized telescope mount called the iOptron Mini Tower Pro. And they pulled Diane’s name!
She graciously went forward and accepted her prize to polite applause, made sure all the shipping details were correct, and then we wandered away, at which point we thought it might be an idea to go back and ask what the heck we’d actually won, because a mount is only of interest to those who already own a telescope, so we’d really not been paying attention to the iOptron stall.
We learned quite a few things. The mount is computerized, has built-in GPS for auto setup, and a massive database of objects programmed into it that it will just find for you automatically when you ask. There is one problem with it. This mount, and my dream Dobsonian are completely, irrevocably, incompatible with each other.
So now what?
We don’t want to just sell the mount. As it is a brand-new product, I personally feel we have a moral obligation to actually use the darn thing and report to the community on its usefulness. That means we are back to square one with telescope buying research.
And yes, I also feel bad about looking a gift horse in the mouth.
I did warn you about the long-windedness of the post though. :)
(I'm not going to bother explaining any of the astro-jargon in this post. It's long enough as it is.)
It was Mid-August. Very hot, and the kitchen was being remodeled so the house was a mess, and very dusty. We were cooking food on the grill and eating it in the backyard, which of course gave me a chance to look at the sky.
Now obviously being in the greater Los Angeles area, the sky consists mostly of two things - Smog, and light pollution; so seeing anything at all is impressive.
What I saw was unmistakably Jupiter. I looked around and spotted some obvious bright stars - Vega, Deneb and Altair, and not much else. On a whim, I went and dug out a pair of binoculars (“a binocular” to be pedantic), and had a closer look at Jupiter. I could clearly see it as a disc, not a point of light, and even make out the 4 Galilean satellites. I was somewhat impressed.
The next few nights, I happily spent a few hours lying in the garden searching for fuzzy blobs. With much persistence, and some unusually clear nights, I found both M31 and M13 with binoculars. Admittedly they are two of the brightest Messier objects, but still challenging from our back garden!
This got me to dreaming of telescope ownership (sharikkamur’s post about the Galileoscope didn’t help :) ).
So I turned to the internet for guidance. The first thing I learned was that telescope technology has come a LONG way in the last 20 years, which is when I was last keeping up to date with the hobby. I rapidly decided on my needs:
* Short setup time so if I had 30 minutes one evening I could drag it out and be observing rapidly
* Easily portable so I could take it to a dark sky site
* Good for visual astronomy (astrophotography is outside my immediate interest)
* Not Too Expensive
* I want it *NOW*
The last requirement was an issue - I know I’m liable to make foolhardy impulse purchases that I could regret, so I came up with a solution. In the short term, I would buy a “cheap” (relatively speaking) scope to prove to myself that I was going to sustain this interest, and I would hold off on a major purchase until I had much more experience.
As luck would have it, while browsing various websites I came across an advertisement for PATS2009, an astronomy expo in Pasadena held late September (last weekend). I decided going and getting “hands on” with a lot of telescopes was a good way of determining what scope suited me best. So my short-term purchase was going to last me until then, at least.
I went and bought a Meade 114EQ ASTR telescope. It’s a little above the “toy” telescope generally sold at Wal Mart and the like, but well below the threshold of being a “real” telescope.
Its good points were its price, ease of use, and optical quality. Its only bad point is the mount and tripod it comes on. The tripod is so flimsy that any time I touch the telescope, it can take 15 seconds for the vibrations to die away before I can see a steady image through the eyepiece.
Having said that, the view through the eyepiece is astounding for a cheap scope - It clearly resolved belts on Jupiter, and Epsilon Lyrae (the double-double). Even better, I took it to a local observing session in a local school’s dark parking lot, and was up and observing in 10 minutes, long before anyone else had even aligned their fancy telescopes!
So the PATS2009 event came along last weekend, and Diane and I went. All the major manufacturers and local retailers were well represented, and I had a great time looking at a huge range of telescopes.
After a lot of walking around and talking, I finally homed in on my dream telescope - an Orion Skyquest XT10 push-to Dobsonian. It covered all of my requirements and more. I was happy, and decided to order one in the near future.
One feature of the PATS expo is that all the dealers there hold raffles, also known as “door prizes” here. Every 30 minutes or so, they would announce another drawing, and everyone would wander over to the relevant stall to see who won what. During the day, we’d seen people winning software, eyepieces, little telescopes, microscopes, t-shirts and other neat items. Then at 3PM, a company called iOptron held their drawing. We were about to leave, and were on our “one last look around the show” tour when this drawing came up, and as we’d already both entered, we decided to see if we won anything.
It turns out they only had one prize, a brand-new computerized telescope mount called the iOptron Mini Tower Pro. And they pulled Diane’s name!
She graciously went forward and accepted her prize to polite applause, made sure all the shipping details were correct, and then we wandered away, at which point we thought it might be an idea to go back and ask what the heck we’d actually won, because a mount is only of interest to those who already own a telescope, so we’d really not been paying attention to the iOptron stall.
We learned quite a few things. The mount is computerized, has built-in GPS for auto setup, and a massive database of objects programmed into it that it will just find for you automatically when you ask. There is one problem with it. This mount, and my dream Dobsonian are completely, irrevocably, incompatible with each other.
So now what?
We don’t want to just sell the mount. As it is a brand-new product, I personally feel we have a moral obligation to actually use the darn thing and report to the community on its usefulness. That means we are back to square one with telescope buying research.
And yes, I also feel bad about looking a gift horse in the mouth.
I did warn you about the long-windedness of the post though. :)