Did I choose the right hobby?

Remember hearing about how bad a man felt because he could not afford to buy
shoes until he saw another man that had lost both his feet?

I work graveyards. All night long. Five nights a week. I live in the
Seattle area. Now, cheer up.


Martin

Uncle Rod wrote:

A nice compromise might be to sell what you have and maybe use a little of
the proceeds for a 6 inch dob or a Short Tube 80, something that won't make
you
feel "pressured" to observe, but which will allow you a quick look now and
then when you feel the inclination.

Good advice IMHO. It may not be necessary to sell the other stuff just yet but
I am a big believer having a scope that can be setup and ready to go in under 2
minutes. (And of course, I think an 8 inch DOB is a better choice than a 6
incher but either way, www.hardinoptical.com is the way to go at this moment...
and no, I do not have any connection with them :-) )

Rod's point of feeling less pressured is a good one, planning can get in the
way of observing. When the sky is clear and the stars are out, just get a
scope out, even if is only for 15 minutes before going to bed. Sometimes when
I wake up in the middle of the night, I take a gander outside and if the stars
are out, I get in a quick 15 minutes with an ST-80 and then go back to bed.

jon

I was reading in the bathroom when I ran across an item written by
(ThomasFL) on 25 Jul 2003 06:16:23 -0700,
which said:

I guess what is frustrating to some degree is the fact that I'm
getting far more use, minimal though it may be, out of my least
expensive gear than I am with my main scope.

Frustrating, maybe, but surely not unexpected, if you think about it?
I mean, field artillery sees a lot more use than the heavy stuff,
right?

As far as "not trying very hard," yeah, I guess I'm not.

Neither am I. I use the weather and mosquitos for excuses; valid
excuses in most cases, but still excuses. My main problem, to
paraphrase someone else, is that I can't set my 'scope up in under two
minutes. I have an 8" reflector on an equatorial mount; the damned
thing is heavy as hell, awkward to carry without breaking down, I find
I can't use it when seated, and it seems to take forever to set up.
I'm going back to a Dob as soon as I can find the money; my 8" dob
(forget the name) had a lousy reputation, but I used it for at least
half an hour in virtually every 24-hour period when the sky was
visible, while I haven't used my present 'scope in months. I have
$300 saved, now, and if I can get as little as $300 for my present
'scope I'll be able to get a 10" dob; heavy, but portable, with
minimal setup.


---------------
Beady's Corollary to Occam's Razor: "The likeliest explanation of any phenomenon is almost always the most boring."

"Starstuffed" wrote in message rthlink.net...

Remember hearing about how bad a man felt because he could not afford to buy
shoes until he saw another man that had lost both his feet?

Hey, that was me! Yes! I once cried because I had no shoes until I met
a man who had no feet so he chopped mine off with a rusty machete but
then ate them for breakfast because he couldn't find a doctor to
attach them to his leg-stubs. And after he did that, I cried some
more, but not because that guy still had no feet. I cried because I no
longer had any feet.

-Skip

In message , lal_truckee
writes
ThomasFL wrote:

On those nights when work doesn't interfere, the skies are cloudy;
when the skies are clear, I've got to get up early and go to work.

Hint - go to bed early, set the alarm for 1am, check the sky; if it's
clear observe until it's time to go to work at sunrise. Early work days
can be a boon rather than a hinderance ...

Various designs for clear sky alarms have been published in electronics
magazines. There is no need to be woken early unless the sky is clear.
(Or approximates to clear according to the trigger limits on the alarm)

Also you don't need to spend a fortune to do amateur astronomy. Plenty
of societies have under used kit just waiting for some keen observers to
use it. And good second hand gear need not be all that expensive either.

Regards,
--
Martin Brown

Did you ever try looking at our star it's pretty cool and easy to find.
The view changes daily


--
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG

In article ,
Martin Brown wrote:
In message , lal_truckee
writes
ThomasFL wrote:

On those nights when work doesn't interfere, the skies are cloudy;
when the skies are clear, I've got to get up early and go to work.

Hint - go to bed early, set the alarm for 1am, check the sky; if it's
clear observe until it's time to go to work at sunrise. Early work days
can be a boon rather than a hinderance ...

Various designs for clear sky alarms have been published in electronics
magazines. There is no need to be woken early unless the sky is clear.
(Or approximates to clear according to the trigger limits on the alarm)

Also you don't need to spend a fortune to do amateur astronomy. Plenty
of societies have under used kit just waiting for some keen observers to
use it. And good second hand gear need not be all that expensive either.

Regards,
--
Martin Brown

Useful and interesting sky observing projects can even be carried out
with the naked eye: meteor observations and aurora observations, for
instance. No, you can't do that every clear night, you must find out
when to observe to do this successfully.




--
----------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Schlyter, Grev Turegatan 40, SE-114 38 Stockholm, SWEDEN
e-mail: pausch at stockholm dot bostream dot se
WWW: http://www.stjarnhimlen.se/
http://home.tiscali.se/pausch/

I RARELY GET TO SET THE SCOPE(S)
UP AND ENJOY THE HOBBY!

On those nights when work doesn't
interfere, the skies are cloudy; when the
skies are clear, I've got to get up early
and go to work.

I know the feeling. I've been out very little over the past year, just
because of life being busy, nights being cloudy, etc, me being
exhausted, or whatever. Like you, I have other hobbies that are less
dependent on conditions and the time when I can do 'em. Still, once
you've got you're equipment, astronomy is pretty much free. I've been
able to spread the cost of my scope over more than a quarter of a
century now, so it gets cheaper all the time. And despite those
other interests I have, astronomy is the one I couldn't live without in
the long run. I could never live in a place where it doesn't get DARK.
Astronomy is the hobby that stretches my mind and helps put my daytime
problems somewhat in perspective.
When Edwin Hubble was asked why he gave up a career in law to
persue astronomy, he said "It was astronomy that mattered."
Marty

(ThomasFL) wrote in message . com...

I really don't expect any answers to this; I'm just venting because so
far this summer there have been only two clear nights around here and
I'm getting a bit frustrated.

Yeah, summer is the pits, isn't it? Fortunately, the situation
will be improving in a couple of months, when it starts to get
dark at a more reasonable hour, and the humidity begins to come
down. Helps both on the lost-sleep front and on the percentage-
of-all-nights front.

Still, it *is* shocking when I divide the cost of my equipment
by the number of observing hours. I view it somewhat as the
classic tip-of-the-iceberg phenomenon, though. For every hour
out under the stars, I spend another in preparation, a third
in post-observation analysis, and a fourth in book-learning
about the objects I have observed. Viewed that way, it isn't
quite so outrageous.

- Tony Flanders

Matt wrote in message ...

I understand your grief. I live on the redwood coast in Northern
California. In other words, a temperate rainforest.

Redwoods live on fog, not rain!

When I have the opportunity and some company I like to
drive to a nice dark site about 10 miles away on top of a hill ...

The difference is that for most of the Gulf Coast, you have
to drive several hundred miles before getting to anywhere
with significantly clearer skies. A profoundly different
set of conditions!

- Tony Flanders