I almost sold my best scope and I am so glad I didn't
I recently moved from Arizona to Oregon and have been adjusting to the cloudiness and cold weather. I have not used my scopes very often but tonight I forced myself to set up my refractor because the sky was clear from horizon to horizon. I live in a house (finally) with a deep back yard and it was very weird not having to drive an hour each way to an observing site to use my scope. The sky became mag. 6 dark as night fell with hardly a trace of light pollution.
Lining up the long refractor on familiar objects that I had not seen in months reminded me of how cleansing a good night of observing is. I was pissed off over some stuff beforehand and now I feel so awesome! Saturn was the best, just etched and it withstood some 400x persuasion. Then there was a moon shadow transit on Jupiter . . . and some deep sky stuff like Hubble's Variable neb. and a few doubles on Orion.
Fate has spoken, despite this poor economy's temptation for me to sell my scopes. Thankfully no one bought them!
I recently moved from Arizona to Oregon and have been adjusting to the cloudiness and cold weather. I have not used my scopes very often but tonight I forced myself to set up my refractor because the sky was clear from horizon to horizon. I live in a house (finally) with a deep back yard and it was very weird not having to drive an hour each way to an observing site to use my scope. The sky became mag. 6 dark as night fell with hardly a trace of light pollution.
Lining up the long refractor on familiar objects that I had not seen in months reminded me of how cleansing a good night of observing is. I was pissed off over some stuff beforehand and now I feel so awesome! Saturn was the best, just etched and it withstood some 400x persuasion. Then there was a moon shadow transit on Jupiter . . . and some deep sky stuff like Hubble's Variable neb. and a few doubles on Orion.
Fate has spoken, despite this poor economy's temptation for me to sell my scopes. Thankfully no one bought them!
