my dad has always had a fascination with the night sky, so growing up, whenever there were meteor showers, especially the Perseids, we would sleep outside in the back yard and count meteors. it’s funny (in an odd sort of way) that despite the awesomeness of Hale-Bopp and Hyakutake, the fire was not lit. it wasn’t until my dad and I went out with his dad’s terrible / low quality 10x50 imitation German binoculars and saw Andromeda and it’s two companion galaxies and then realized I could also see Andromeda with just my eyes, I didn’t need optics.
then BOOM, we bought some better bino’s and after I went on a trip and had the chance to look through a 16" Celestron SCT that was pointed at Saturn with its rings and moons, told my dad, who hated telescopes, we were getting a telescope. he hated telescopes because he was gifted a department store model and as the mounts, they come with are absolute garbage, could never get it to work and soured him on them. we got an 8" dobsonian…then a 12" dobsonian and then we found ourselves only using our binocular collection, which also expanded. the 12" was just to cumbersome…big and heavy to load up, transport, take out and setup.
I gave my dad my 20x80 Garrett Optical bins, which he still has and are probably going on 20 years of age now. while I haven’t done anythign astronomical for close to 8 years now, I am set binocular wise with all three Nikon Premier SE models…8x32, 10x42 and 12x50. that said, as amazing as those are, I lust for the Nikon Edg and Edg II…but alas, don’t have the $10K+ it would cost to collect them, as they are discontinued and a collectors item. last of Nikon Alpha glass…
Ah, good stuff. Yeah, ‘regular’ people don’t realize one usually spends more on the mount than the scope et al.
Those dobs bring in lots of light but dang it’s a big tube. I had a Meade 8" SCT that ultimately I sold to a guy in Germany. It was less expensive to ship a used one than buy new there. I lived about 50 miles from where Meade made them…
I enjoy binos and even monos more than all that gear but then I have to travel to get away from the massive city glow.
I got hooked when I saw my first lunar eclipse about age 7.
I know I experienced a solar eclipse when I was a kid…I remember being on break and out in the school yard and suddenly it went dark as night. alas, looking up info for when and where I was at the time has come up blank…which is weird.
of all the observing my dad and I did in the 2000’s, my favorite memories are the two of us sitting out at our spot 30 min from town during the winter, sitting in collapsible chairs with big heavy blankets over our laps, with one of our two ‘astro dogs’ in our laps, sipping hot chocolate from a carafe we filled at a convenience store on the way there. just sitting there ogling the night sky. bringing up bino’s to look at items in the Messier, Herschel or Caldwell catalogs. so awesome.
First time I saw one I was driving East through Arizona and happened to stop at a rest stop and out of the corner of my eye I saw the jellyfish…about 7-8 years ago.
my buddy in Florida used to kayak and play hide n seek with the water patrols to watch the rockets lift off at Cape Canaveral; says he lost many a hat to them.
Coolest thing I’ve ever seen is a night Space Shuttle launch from as close as civilians can get – within 10 miles. But we had an unencumbered view of the pad from across a large lagoon in a private area.
Yeah. They’re working to increase it to ~500ft (150m). It’s currently 30ft. (9m) in diameter. Crazy huge. Changing the diameter would be a massive retool though. Extending it in length is relatively simple as it’s just more ‘rings’ welded in the stack.
