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Important tips on astronomy
I don't know how much experience people here have with telescopes.
I used to be the Astronomer Royal, which gives me authority to offer some fairly advanced advice: 1. The light goes into the end with the big window, but only in the southern hemisphere. 2. In the northern hemisphere, point the scope down toward the ground. Starlight goes right through the Earth. 3. Use a 2000x eyepiece in a cheap 2" telescope to start with, to make sure you like this activity before spending big money. 4. Fiddle around with that setup until you see extra-terrestrials waving at you. 5. Any vibration you see with the above setup is your own fault. Try not to be so nervous. 6. If you see any dust on the lens or mirror, take it out and scrub it vigorously with cleanser. Rinse and replace. Don't worry about alignment. 7. You can see the stars better during the daytime. At night there is no light to see anything, obviously. 8. Don't try to count the stars. They've already been counted. There are exactly 14. If you see more, take a break until you feel better. 9. If you spot a big fuzzy thing, you're out of focus. If you can't get it in focus, go home and take up knitting. 10. If objects in the scope seem to move while you are watching, you are leaning on the telescope. Stand much farther away. Astronomy is a bad hobby for klutzes. 11. When photographing the sun, a flashbulb will provide better illumination. Amazingly, most amateurs don't understand this. 12. If you spot a huge thing headed straight at you, it's probably a meteorite. They are valuable, so get a buttefly net and catch it. 13. Overall telescope power is given by K' = 2.7031az/y, where h is the height off the ground and w is your weight. 14. That equation explains why fat people make the best astronomers. 15. The universe is expanding ever faster, so the sooner you look at things, the better. In a few weeks nothing will be visible, and it will look red. Read these tips to your local astronomy club for confirmation. To impress them, say you wrote them yourself. |
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