[Friends_of_SSASTROS] Notes From The Field - Is it Really My Best Telescope?

[Mike McCabe]

Thursday, March 16th 2023; 

There’s an old saying in the amateur astronomy circles, andit goes something like this; your besttelescope is the one that you use most often. It's a saying that makes sense. Whatit refers to, generally speaking, is a common affliction amongst telescope aficionados knownas aperture fever. It’s a condition that affects most astronomy hobbyists atsome point in time, and its primary symptom is a seemingly irresistible piningfor bigger and bigger optical systems.  Thisoften comes at the cost of usability, because bigger means heavier, and heaviermeans more challenging to set up, and more challenging to set up often leads tojust deciding not to. So, the smaller telescope that you get out with moreoften, and ultimately see more with, really is your best telescope.
But in my case I think I can see an exception to the rule. Yousee today marks the day that I logged my 1,001st deployment of mybeloved Coronado Personal Solar Telescope. That’s a lot of times using atelescope, no doubt about it. And it has shown me a lot – when it comes tofeatures on the Sun seen in a very tiny bandwidth of the electromagneticspectrum known as Hydrogen-Alpha light. But it’s never shown me anything aboutany other object in the cosmos, ever. That’s because it can’t. It passes such aridiculously small amount of light that nothing other than something as brightas the Sun can be seen in it. With that said, there’s also nothing else in thecosmos that changes as much or more quickly than our favorite star. It is byfar the most dynamic object up there, sometimes changing in real time as welook at it.

As for what I would declare as my best telescope, I can’tsay. I own scopes from 2” to 12.5”, and an almost embarrassingly high number ofvariables in between those sizes. I say almost because it really doesn’t embarrassme. I love telescopes.

Nothing in my fleet has better figured optics than thelittle Stellarvue refractor with ED glass. The bare-bones 8” Newtonian/Dobsonian alsohas good optics. That one was the first telescope to show me the companion toSirius, affectionately referred to as the Pup. The 4” long-focus refractor putsup exceptionally sharp, high contrast views of the Moon and the planets. The 6”refractors, hard as they are to mount, can be pushed to ridiculously highpowers on double stars. The 12.5” does what light-buckets do, and that is to shownebulous objects well. It surprised me early one October morning many years agowith a stunning look at the Flame nebula in Orion. I can’t forget the venerable4.5” Newts – they’ve showed me so much!And then there are the binoculars…never mind, I think I’ll stop now.

My latest telescope that has the potential to see a lot ofuse over the rest of this year and perhaps beyond is a recently completedreplica of an 18th century ‘Sky Tube’, which is what they calledtelescopes back in the day. In a complete reversal of the aperture feveraffliction, this scope sports an aperture of just 18mm. Yes, you read thatright, it’s drawing in a column of light that is just under three quarters ofan inch. There are reasons for this that I won’t get into right now, but if allgoes as planned it could be in the running for my best telescope of 2023, atleast if we base on number of deployments 

So what about you guys? What qualifies as your besttelescope? Is there one that you get out with more often for any particularreason? Or better yet why not share with us your disaster story, the one whereyou bought a big telescope only to find out that it is so difficult to deploy thatit’s either collecting dust or had to be moved on to a better home. Yes,disaster stories are much more entertaining. Do share.

Keep Looking Up!

Mike McCabe

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