Category Archives: stargazing

stargazing, telescopes

Telescope Jonesing

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To GOTO or not to GOTO?

I was browsing around the other day on the Web, looking at reviews of automated telescopes. Now, mind you, I already have a telescope — a very nice 6″ Sovietski that came with a pier mount you could dock boats to.  It’s a great scope, but it’s not set up in my yard, and so I have to drag it out whenever I want to do any viewing.  Which means, between bad weather at night, clouds of mosquitos, and the weight of the pier mount, it doesn’ get out as often as I’d like it to. Yet, I like to look through scopes at the sky.  I have a smaller AstroScan, which is more portable, but has its limitations.

So, I’ve been considering two options:  1) selling the Sovietski to someone who might use it more than I do and then buying an easier-to-transport automated scope, or b) keeping the Sovietski and buying the automated ‘scope anyway.

The cost of the new automated scopes is more than I expected, at least in the 6-inch and higher range.  But they are sweet-looking, and it would be nice to slew from object to object on the few occasions when I have sky, time, and good weather here.  Now, I know there are these debates that still rage in the amateur community about whether ’tis nobler to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous polar alignment issues that are inherent in both types of scopes.

And, there are those who say you’re not truly doing astronomy if all you do is “point and shoot.” They wax lyrical about the “fun of the chase” in searching out dim, distant fuzzies in the sky. Having done it, I can see their point, somewhat. I don’t subscribe to any such stringent “one-true-way” outlooks; I just wanna get out there and do some guerilla viewing when I can.  There’s no deadline on this; I just have to save the money up to do it, if I decide to get one of these scopes.  But, as for the to GOTO or not to GOTO?  No problems there.

stargazing, venus

Wandering and Planet-gazing

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Venus and the Pleiades, 2007 April 13 by Geoff Chester, and posted on the US Naval Observatoryweb page.
Venus and the Pleiades, 2007 April 13 by Geoff Chester, and posted on the US Naval Observatory web page.

We celebrated my birthday on Friday by taking the day off and wandering up the coast of Maine. It’s a pretty state and when the weather’s nice but the tourists haven’t arrived yet, it’s sublime.

I noticed the skies were pretty dark there, even with the glow of a few distant city nebulae on the horizons.

As we were driving back home, we kept watching Venus off in the west. Even though I knew Venus was setting, the planet still looked a little different from what I’m used to. It seemed more “reddish,” probably because we were looking at it through the lower part of Earth’s atmosphere—the “muck” as we call it in stargazing circles. But it was shining like a bright beacon as it set.

Venus is still bright in the western sky, and sets late in the evening for the next few weeks. It’ll be the bright light in the western sky that isn’t point-like, doesn’t move like a plane, and isn’t a flying saucer. Look for it if you’re out wandering around enjoying the onset of northern hemisphere summer or early winter in the southern hemisphere.