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

[LOUIS GENTILE]

Mike,
My first scope was a 2 inch Gilbert cardboard refractor. You slid one small cardboard tube in and out of a larger one to focus. Viewing the moon with it was inspiring for  my 10 year old mind….It’s been all uphill since with no regrets !
Setting up the scopes I have now is never a problem…anticipation overrules any inconvenience 

Louis A. Gentile 
Cell    781-561-5535

> On Mar 16, 2023, at 12:26 PM, Mike McCabe <cartech2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> Thursday, March 16th 2023; 
> 
> There’s an old saying in the amateur astronomy circles, and it goes something like this; your best telescope is the one that you use most often. It's a saying that makes sense. What it refers to, generally speaking, is a common affliction amongst telescope aficionados known as aperture fever. It’s a condition that affects most astronomy hobbyists at some point in time, and its primary symptom is a seemingly irresistible pining for bigger and bigger optical systems.  This often comes at the cost of usability, because bigger means heavier, and heavier means more challenging to set up, and more challenging to set up often leads to just deciding not to. So, the smaller telescope that you get out with more often, and ultimately see more with, really is your best telescope.
> But in my case I think I can see an exception to the rule. You see today marks the day that I logged my 1,001st deployment of my beloved Coronado Personal Solar Telescope. That’s a lot of times using a telescope, no doubt about it. And it has shown me a lot – when it comes to features on the Sun seen in a very tiny bandwidth of the electromagnetic spectrum known as Hydrogen-Alpha light. But it’s never shown me anything about any other object in the cosmos, ever. That’s because it can’t. It passes such a ridiculously small amount of light that nothing other than something as bright as the Sun can be seen in it. With that said, there’s also nothing else in the cosmos that changes as much or more quickly than our favorite star. It is by far the most dynamic object up there, sometimes changing in real time as we look at it.
> 
> As for what I would declare as my best telescope, I can’t say. I own scopes from 2” to 12.5”, and an almost embarrassingly high number of variables in between those sizes. I say almost because it really doesn’t embarrass me. I love telescopes.
> 
> Nothing in my fleet has better figured optics than the little Stellarvue refractor with ED glass. The bare-bones 8” Newtonian/Dobsonian also has good optics. That one was the first telescope to show me the companion to Sirius, affectionately referred to as the Pup. The 4” long-focus refractor puts up 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 high powers on double stars. The 12.5” does what light-buckets do, and that is to show nebulous objects well. It surprised me early one October morning many years ago with a stunning look at the Flame nebula in Orion. I can’t forget the venerable 4.5” 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 of use over the rest of this year and perhaps beyond is a recently completed replica of an 18th century ‘Sky Tube’, which is what they called telescopes back in the day. In a complete reversal of the aperture fever affliction, this scope sports an aperture of just 18mm. Yes, you read that right, it’s drawing in a column of light that is just under three quarters of an inch. There are reasons for this that I won’t get into right now, but if all goes as planned it could be in the running for my best telescope of 2023, at least if we base on number of deployments 
> 
> So what about you guys? What qualifies as your best telescope? Is there one that you get out with more often for any particular reason? Or better yet why not share with us your disaster story, the one where you bought a big telescope only to find out that it is so difficult to deploy that it’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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