A New Telescope
We have two little inexpensive telescopes here at the house that I would classify as cheap garbage. When I bought each of them, I thought they would be "decent" but they were far from decent and well below my own level of "acceptable".
Neither of those telescopes are capable of relatively sharp viewing which has been a source of significant frustration. Even the little telescope that I had as a child produced far better images of the moon whenever I pulled the telescope out to view with my neighbors. I've gotten to the point where I want to just throw these two little telescopes on a bonfire and be done with the frustration.
This sentiment has led me to a decision that it was time to shed my life of more unnecessary frustration including these two telescopes. If you follow this blog, you know that the past nine months have been nothing but stress and frustration for Sheila and me in every aspect of our life except for our relationship which, amazingly, hasn't been negatively impacted in the least. It is definitely time to eliminate unnecessary frustration so these two telescopes are headed to the dump.
So, I've been spending my reading time (we're at the hospital a lot so there happens to be a lot of reading time) refreshing my memory on aerospace, astronomy and telescopes. Relatively quickly, I realized that I had forgotten a lot but I narrowed my choices down to three different telescopes. I had a bit of difficulty choosing a tripod mount though. I know I wanted a good mount but I had to keep my decisions affordable and reasonable. I have also been wanting to capture some long exposure photographs of some deep space objects so this would require a decent tracking mount.
Long story short... I chose a high quality telescope based on features I desired and astro photos I found online. These deep space images looked great so I knew the telescope would be great for viewing. I then chose a decent tripod mount that is a "Go To" mount that can track stars too. The mount arrived a few days ago and the telescope just arrived just an hour or so ago. So far, I am impressed with the quality!
I pointed the scope out our living room window and toward a nearby mountaintop and the view was as sharp as can be. That is a good sign and gets me excited about viewing the night sky!
Here is a shot of the whole package setup in our living room...
The handheld controller... I can skew to objects by hand by disengaging the motors on the mount... or I can skew by using the direction arrows on this handheld controller... or I can choose an object from the catalogs stored in this handheld controller (272,000 objects to choose from!) and just hit that yellow button and watch the telescope skew to the object on its own.
I'm still waiting for a few small bits and pieces to arrive but I'm looking forward to checking out the night sky with this amazing piece of scientific equipment! I'll certainly write more as I learn more about this telescope.
Neither of those telescopes are capable of relatively sharp viewing which has been a source of significant frustration. Even the little telescope that I had as a child produced far better images of the moon whenever I pulled the telescope out to view with my neighbors. I've gotten to the point where I want to just throw these two little telescopes on a bonfire and be done with the frustration.
This sentiment has led me to a decision that it was time to shed my life of more unnecessary frustration including these two telescopes. If you follow this blog, you know that the past nine months have been nothing but stress and frustration for Sheila and me in every aspect of our life except for our relationship which, amazingly, hasn't been negatively impacted in the least. It is definitely time to eliminate unnecessary frustration so these two telescopes are headed to the dump.
So, I've been spending my reading time (we're at the hospital a lot so there happens to be a lot of reading time) refreshing my memory on aerospace, astronomy and telescopes. Relatively quickly, I realized that I had forgotten a lot but I narrowed my choices down to three different telescopes. I had a bit of difficulty choosing a tripod mount though. I know I wanted a good mount but I had to keep my decisions affordable and reasonable. I have also been wanting to capture some long exposure photographs of some deep space objects so this would require a decent tracking mount.
I pointed the scope out our living room window and toward a nearby mountaintop and the view was as sharp as can be. That is a good sign and gets me excited about viewing the night sky!
Here is a shot of the whole package setup in our living room...
The handheld controller... I can skew to objects by hand by disengaging the motors on the mount... or I can skew by using the direction arrows on this handheld controller... or I can choose an object from the catalogs stored in this handheld controller (272,000 objects to choose from!) and just hit that yellow button and watch the telescope skew to the object on its own.
I'm still waiting for a few small bits and pieces to arrive but I'm looking forward to checking out the night sky with this amazing piece of scientific equipment! I'll certainly write more as I learn more about this telescope.
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