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OpticsBlog – Thoughts and reviews of binoculars, telescopes, scopes, sights, and much more - birdwatching, astronomy, target shooting - pretty much anything related to optics, nature, and life!Wednesday, June 30, 2010Mosquitoes and telescopesI was out in the raspberry patch in our backyard, yesterday afternoon, picking raspberries for our dinner and happy to report we ate well, last night. Nothing like fresh raspberries, right from your own garden. On the other hand, the recent wet weather, followed by a stretch of dry weather has been perfect to raise, not just raspberries, but also mosquitoes. It took only about three minutes in the raspberry patch to retreat and return with some mosquito repellent. Now five or ten minutes, picking raspberries in a horde of mosquitoes is doable if you are doused by repellent, but it’s a different story when trying to do astronomy with clouds of these pests humming around your head and besides, you can’t do a lot of astronomy with binoculars or telescopes in five or ten minutes. Casual dousing with repellent just doesn’t cut it for this job. So how does a backyard astronomer cope with mosquitoes in the summer when they are at their worst? Using a telescope can be hard enough without the nuisance of mosquitoes. As much as I hate to wear jeans, a hat and a long sleeved shirt during the summer, I grab them when it comes time to do astronomy. I then spray everything down, myself and clothes, with repellent. If that doesn’t work, I have been known to use a bug head net and bug jacket, but the head net is a real pain when trying to look through a telescope eyepiece. Usually the clothes and repellent do the job. As for repellents, I do not use anything with DEET since DEET acts like a finish remover and that is not a good thing when handling expensive optics. I use plant based repellents, even though they are not quite as effective as DEET. As long as I am dressed, head to toe, these other repellents do the job. Tuesday, June 29, 2010Cameras for fireworks
The Fourth is coming and a lot of folks will want to try their hand at taking digital pics of fireworks displays. I've used film cameras for many years to shoot fireworks and it's really quite simple, but what about digital cameras? Sure, it's easy to use digital cameras for fireworks, even point and shoot digital cameras. Best of all, it's so easy easy anyone can do it, assuming you have a a digital camera with the right "mode" and even if you don't, you can still use manual setting to get what you want. Not sure? Just check you digital camera menu options or the specs of the digital camera you want to buy and see if it has a "fireworks" mode. Most digital cameras have this, even inexpensive digital cameras such as a Canon Powershot A490. If your camera does not have a dedicated fireworks mode, try a "landscape" or "night" mode.
The most important ingredient is actually not the mode, but a tripod. Shooting in the dark means long exposures, so if you want nice, beautiful trails of those fireworks lights, you will need a tripod for the sake of steadiness. The good news, if you are shooting a small point and shoot camera, such as a Canon Powershot, you don't need much in the way of a tripod. One of the small digi tripods will do just fine, such as a Bogen digi. See you at the show. My husband will be the one with the digital camera. I'm going to stick to my film camera out of tradition.
Monday, June 28, 2010Binoculars, telescopes and more or ... less Took a few minutes, last night, to step outside to enjoy the moon. No, I didn’t use my astronomy binoculars or my telescopes; I just enjoyed the view, au natural, without looking through a binocular or a telescope eyepiece. Is it any winder the moon has been the subject of so much poetry and romantic prose? Just proves that we can still fall under that age old spell of our big satellite. I know that anyone who reads this blog must think that I am obsessed with equipment and I do confess that I enjoy working with cameras, binoculars, spotting scopes, telescopes and so on' Truth be known, though, I am really more of a hopeless romantic dreamer than a tecno geek. I see all this optical equipment as a means to an end. Telescopes, spotting scopes and binoculars give me even more of a glimpse into the natural world I adore and, in the case of cameras, a way to express my artistic nature. To be sure, I fell in love with Nature long before I ever owned any equipment of any type and, to this day, after some sixty years of life, I am quite content to just sit under a dark sky filled with stars or on the shore of a lake, just enjoying the view or … just enjoying a nearly full moon on a summer night. Friday, June 25, 2010Head to the marshYou might think it is a little early to be thinking about fall bird migration, but if you love birding and birdwatching for shorebirds – sandpipers, plovers and the like – you know better. Those migrants leave their nesting grounds, up north, early and start to show up in July. By the end of July, you can have quite a good list of shorebirds you have seen. Of course, as always, it may take some scouting to find a marsh or lake with exposed mud flats, but once find the right location, you have a birding goldmine. Now is definitely the time to start scouting. Since you will be out there with a spotting scope – and you will want a birding spotting scope for shorebirds – you might as well pack along a small digital point and shoot camera, like a Canon Powershot and take some bird pics. A marsh is a great place to begin your digiscoping, since marsh birds are relatively good subject for photography, since they don’t move around quite as much as song birds. Besides, a marsh, bog, swamp or other wetland is always an interesting place if you love nature, whether you are carrying binoculars, a spotting scope or a camera. In fact, I’ve often just carried a lawn chair and sat back to watch the show. Thursday, June 24, 2010Telescope timeIf it ever stops raining, I will pull out one of the telescopes and do some astronomy. The moon is not too favorable, right now, for some deep-sky work, but I’ll take the next clear night to some astronomy, anyway. It’s been too long since I’ve looked though a telescope eyepiece. Ouch! I have to take some of the blame, though. I keep using the excuse that I might as well wait till I get up north to our new home and do some “real” astronomy under a truly dark sky. Big mistake. Any sky is better than no sky. Then, too, all this preparation to sell our current home and make ready for a relocation has worn us out. There just doesn’t seem to be enough energy left, some nights, to grab a telescope and get that darn telescope set up and ready for some astronomy. On the night when I did find a little strength to do some astronomy, I opted, instead, for the convenience of one of my astronomy binoculars. That’s fine, of course, since I love binocular astronomy, too, but it means my telescopes are collecting too much dust and that is not like me, not at all. No doubt about it – I have a lot of telescope time to recover and I’m not going to sit out the summer for lack of energy or a good place to observe. Time to get busy with telescopes. Wednesday, June 23, 2010Camera case and carrierI’m sure I’m not the first photographer to discover that carrying a lot of gear is a real pain in the neck and that one way to solve that hassle is by using a bicycle equipped with a rack and bags. Even if you have to walk a bike in a crowd, that a bike still makes a nice carrier on wheels for all those cameras, both film and digital cameras, plus camera lenses and camera accessories. You can even strap a tripod to the rear rack on a bike if you need bring a tripod. You can still have cameras ready for quick work with this arrangement. In my front bike bag, I can squeeze a camera with a midsize telephoto lens, such as a Canon Rebel, into the bag, then just lift the camera rig out as needed. If you use a bag with several pockets, you can even keep digital cameras in one section and lenses or a film camera in the other. Then, too, you can still strap one camera around your neck and have it ready to go. Anyway, my typical bike ride, of late, has been loaded with at least tow film cameras and assorted lenses and digital cameras, both small and large. I’m getting to the point where I feel like a camera shop on wheels, but it sure beats carrying all this photo gear on foot. Tuesday, June 22, 2010Dark skies comingWhen I think about it, it has been quite a long time since I enjoyed my astronomy with binoculars or telescopes from a truly dark site. In fact, it has been over then years. Given my love of astronomy, that seems, well, a bit shocking. How did I ever let life detour me like that? The answer, of course, is that I sacrificed some things for the sake of job or family; in that respect, I am no different than most and, in my own defense, I never stopped using my astronomy binoculars or telescopes, even when I lived in some severely light polluted areas. My days of fighting and cursing light pollution are about to end when we move up north to our new home, early this fall. To say that I am eager to see dark skies, again, is an understatement. When I can see the Andromeda Galaxy without using telescopes or even binoculars, as I did when I was young in rural Nebraska, I will breathe a sigh of relief. To easily count a dozen globular clusters in a single night of observing with my astronomy binoculars will bring a huge smile to my face. Funny how moving to a new home can bring you right back home. Monday, June 21, 2010Buy a telescope or a binocularWhen we buy a telescope or buy a binocular or any other optical instrument, we try, of course, to go about it logically and rationally. We balance features, cost and some personal preferences to find the best telescope or the best binocular for us. Now, then, if we were totally logical creatures, buying telescopes, binoculars, spotting scopes and so on would be a rather easy task; we could just go down the list of features and check the ones we wanted. However, spending a sometimes large amount of money for a telescope, binocular, spotting scope or other optic is also an emotional decision. It sure is for me and often I find myself picking one model or another on some very intangible features. For instance, I may have a preference for one company or another based on their corporate policies and viewpoints or I may decide I do not want to buy a product made in one country or another. Personal preferences, such as these, really don’t have much to do with the product, itself, but they can be the very factors that make or break a choice. Even when we are logical and restrict the discussion strictly to features, there will always be one or two features that are far more important than the rest. To be sure, not all features have the same weight or importance. The trick is knowing what those features are and deciding how much you are willing to sacrifice to get them in terms of other features. Things really get tough when the two features we want are mutually exclusive, such as when we want a large telescope to get performance, but we want a small telescope that is easy to transport. No wonder folks often need a bit of help when deciding to buy a telescope or a binocular. Friday, June 18, 2010Another great camera Bought another old film camera, yesterday to add to my growing collection of film and digital cameras and, of course, lenses. This one is a Nikon FE2 (handsome devil, eh?) and it will make a nice addition to my slightly older Nikon FE and, of course, my baby, my Nikon F3HP. That should be all the Nikon SLR film cameras I need, for a bit, though it’s hard to pass up one of these great cameras when the prices are so low. As for lenses and camera accessories, well, a camera crazy gal like me can never have enough camera lenses. So why would a gal want so many film camera bodies? After all, you can only use one film camera body at a time, right? That’s a question I get from folks who have only used digital cameras and, yes, digital cameras have been around so long, now, that there are some younger photographers who have never used anything but digital. If you’re one of these younger photographers, the answer is simple. By carrying more than one film camera body, you can have access to different kinds of film, assuming you load each camera with a different type of film. Most frequently, I carry one body with a high speed film and another with slower, finer-grained film, but sometimes I carry one body with print film with another body with slide film or, maybe, one body with color film and one with black and white film. That way I can match camera and film with shooting conditions or the best film choice for the specific job at hand. Of course, digital cameras basically do all of this for you solve this for you in a single camera body, so no need to cart other digital cameras with you and when I need to go light, that is one of the reasons I use digital cameras. When I can afford to carry the gear, though, there is still something very reassuring about a case full of cameras and lenses and even that tripod I am carrying over my shoulder. Thursday, June 17, 2010Telescopes and mosquitoesCrescent moon, tonight, so maybe time to get out the astronomy binoculars or the telescope and have a good look. I like observing under a crescent moon; the moon, itself, makes a very dramatic image in this phase and, yet, the moon is still not so bright as to preclude some observing for deep-sky objects. You really get the best of both worlds under a crescent moon, assuming you do observe the moon with binoculars or telescopes. You really should, since the moon is a great target for any binocular or telescope. The biggest factor, tonight, though, may be the mosquitoes. Yes, mosquitoes can be bad enough for many an astronomer to cut their sessions short and head indoors. It’s happened to me and, make no mistake, there are nights when all the repellant in the world won’t keep you from getting bitten. Then, too, repellants with DEET can gum the finish of optics or take it off, completely, so I’m not too thrilled to use the stuff when using telescopes or binoculars. The good news is that I’ve sometimes gone out, later, on those same nights and found the mosquitoes to be much less of a problem. If these little bloodsuckers are keeping you away from your telescopes or binoculars at night, you might want to give that a try. Wednesday, June 16, 2010North woods birding, astronomy After nearly three inches of rain, yesterday afternoon, I am happy to see the sun peeking through the clouds, this morning and a dry wind picking up from the west. These days after a heavy rain are the ideal time to get out on the trail with the binoculars and do some birdwatching. It’s been my experience that bird activity increases the day after a heavy storm. Anyway, the trail calls to me, this morning, and I am eager to be outdoors. Most of my birding, lately, has been from my kitchen window. Funny how life can be so darn busy when you are supposedly “retired” or, at least, “semi-retired” as in my case. I don’t expect that to change when we relocate to the north country, this fall, but I do hope that living with the north woods and lakes right out our back door will allow me to spend a little more time, outdoors. Busy is okay, but I just want more that busy time to be outdoor time. For sure, our new home will provide much better opportunities to use my biding binoculars, astronomy binoculars, telescopes, digital cameras, not to mention our canoe, our kayak, our camper and so on. That’s why we are moving, after all. We are outdoor folks, at heart, and it’s all about being next to the things you love. Nothing against Milwaukee – it’s been good to us – but the north woods are calling. Tuesday, June 15, 2010Telescope accessories - finderscopesSometimes it’s the little telescope accessories that make all the difference in your observing. These include finderscopes, vibration pads, slow motion controls where appropriate and, of course, telescope eyepieces. Finderscopes are especially important – if you can’t aim your telescope, accurately, you’re out of business. Yes, the finder scope is definitely one of those telescope accessories that can make or break even a good telescope. I have used both large optical finder scopes, such as an 8x50 or the 9x50 Celestron and red dot finderscopes, going back to the days when I first attached a TelRad to my old Dobsonian telescope. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. A good optical finder scope with crosshairs is the most accurate and the best choice when you need to pinpoint the location of very small objects. (Notice I said good. I do not include the cheap little 8x25 or 6x30 finderscopes you find on cheap telescopes. These are more likely to frustrate a beginner than help. I always replace such finderscopes with either a full size optical finderscope or a red dot finder scope.) The bad news about optical finderscopes is that they can be hard to use with their typically inverted images and the necessity of getting your eye right on the scope to see anything. This can be a real neck breaker at times. I much prefer red dot finderscopes for ease of use. No need to get your eye right on the scope to see anything and the image is, of course, always upright and correct. Red dots are not as accurate as a good optical finderscope, but they will work for the vast majority of objects you want to see. Best of all, a red dot finder scope, such as the Celestron Star Pointer or Televue Qwik-Point can be added to nearly any telescope by simply using double-sided tape or Velcro. Monday, June 14, 2010Digital vs film, again  Our backyard is not only a birdwatching paradise, it is also photography heaven, what with all the flowers constantly in bloom. This makes for not only a beautiful place, but also an arena for my almost daily workouts with the cameras, both the film cameras and the digital cameras. This practice, right out my back door, keeps my photography skills sharp for what I regard as the my more serious wildflower photography. To be sure, this is a prejudice on my part; domestic flower photography really is a glorious pursuit in its own right. Besides, what photographer can resist the lure of gorgeous flowers every time you look out a window? Yes, I still use my film cameras. The old digital versus film argument makes for good reading and lots of hits on the internet forums, but I’ve never been a “one or the other” kind of person. I enjoy and use both types of cameras. Digital cameras can do some things better than film cameras; film cameras can do some things, better. Until, recently, I haven’t been set up to share the results of my film work, but Bill has a scanner buried somewhere in his office, so I will give that a try with some of my film prints. I know it won’t do justice to the film prints, but it will allow me to share, at least to some degree, the results of my film cameras. We’ll see. In the meantime, here are some more results of my digital cameras. One, of course, is from the garden. One is a wildflower. Don't ask me to choose which I like the best. Friday, June 11, 2010How to buy binoculars, spotting scopes and telescopesWouldn’t it be nice if we just use a mathematical equation to choose which binoculars, spotting scopes and telescopes are best for us so that we can get that one perfect model? Believe me, it’s been tried by many folks, but, in the end, all such quick answer schemes fail. Why? For one thing, we are not really always mathematical when it comes time to make a large purchase. Spending a lot of money on anything is typically as much an emotional experience as it is an objective exercise. For another thing, there are always some features on a binocular, spotting scope or telescope that appeal to us very strongly, some features that interest us, mildly, and some features we could care less about. How do you weight all these likes and dislikes, especially when you are not sure what you will like or dislike? Do you have to take a chance and just buy a binocular, buy a spotting scope or buy a telescope to find out? No wonder some customers agonize over purchasing binoculars, spotting scopes, telescopes, digital cameras and so on. The good news is that there are resources to use to become better informed about all those binocular, spotting scope and telescope features. I know, because I have written many of these optics articles for OpticsPlanet in the hopes that customers can avoid some of the mistakes I’ve made over the years. First hand knowledge of optics that comes from buying many binoculars, spotting scopes and telescopes, as I have been doing for forty years, is a great way to learn, but it can be expensive. So, if you are getting ready to make that big purchase, check out our Learn section and start reading. Thursday, June 10, 2010Cameras at the beachIf you’ve ever spent much time at the beach, you know that sand has a way of finding its way into everything and, unfortunately, that includes binoculars and digital cameras, if you happen to be carrying them. Worst of all, it only takes a grain or two of sand to do some serious damage to any precision piece of optical equipment. Needless to say, when you get home, a good cleaning is mandatory and the best tool for the job is one of the many brands of lens pen on the market. All lens pens include a most vital tool for removing sand – a lens brush. This must be carefully used to remove grit and grains of sand before any cleaning is attempted with a lens cloth or the head of the lens pen. Okay, but what can you do while you are at the beach? My advice is to carry the binocular and, especially, the camera around your neck via a strap. The higher you can keep the binocular or camera off the sand, the better. Those small digital point and shoot cameras are especially vulnerable because it is a habit for most of us to carry them in a pocket. Pockets, though, are magnets for sand, as anyone who has spent time at a beach can attest and it only takes a single grain of sand to work its way into the focusing motor on these little cameras to do irreparable damage. Not good. By straps, I am also talking about neck-style camera straps, not those little wrist straps often supplied with the camera. The last place you want that camera is dangling from your wrist as you go about working around the sand. Wednesday, June 09, 2010The binoculars win, againClearing skies and a waning crescent moon should make for some astronomy with the binoculars or telescopes, tonight. Astronomy binoculars or telescopes? It's always a tough decision to make, but, lately, it’s been the binoculars. Last time I was out, I used the astronomy binoculars to hunt down some globular clusters, though I had to cut the session short to take care of some pleasant family business – took a phone call from one of my daughters wishing me happy birthday. Back to the astronomy, tonight, if the skies are clear. I’ve been thwarted by the trees in the yard blocking my view of the southern skies, so I may hit the road till I find an open area with more of a view to the south. That’s the part of the sky that holds the most globular clusters, so, tonight may be as much a hunt for a better observing site as for the clusters, themselves. I am tempted to take the telescope, but the astronomy binoculars are so much more convenient and easier to pack than even a small telescope, so really not much of a decision. When I find a good site y to pack where I can set up and stay for an hour or two, I’ll return with the telescope. Looks like the binoculars win, again. Tuesday, June 08, 2010Great telescope eyepieces Over many, many years of messing with optics of all kinds, including telescopes, spotting scopes, binoculars, microscopes and so on, the fussier I seem to get about eyepieces. Maybe it’s the fact that I use eyeglasses when I look through an eyepiece that has made me so critical of eyepieces or maybe it’s just hard-earned experience that has taught me how important eyepieces are to the overall performance of any optical instrument. Whatever the reason, I am willing to pay the big bucks to get a telescope or spotting scope eyepiece that makes me happy. In fact, it’s gotten to the point where I will refuse to use anything but an excellent eyepiece. Telescope eyepieces are the easiest way to test how important a good eyepiece can be, because telescope eyepieces are nearly universal in terms of fitting any brand of telescope. That means you can test dozens of brands and models of telescope eyepieces in any single model of telescope to get a hands on test of what each telescope eyepiece can do. Caution, though! Once you have used a high grade, high performance eyepiece, like my Televue 22 mm Nagler, it is nearly impossible to settle, again, for a cheap eyepiece. Scan the star fields of Sagittarius with one of these and you will be ready to mortgage the house to get one. Monday, June 07, 2010Film vs digital and the winner is ...? People who have seen my pics of flowers taken with my digital cameras have asked why I still bother to also use film cameras to take flower pics. After all, taking flowers pics with digital cameras is easier and more convenient. Nothing like modern digital camera features, such image stabilization and autofocus, to make quick work of taking pics of flowers in your garden and even mid-priced digital cameras, such as a Canon SD1200 IS will have those features, anymore. Then, too, it's also very gratifying to pull those pics, instantly, and review them on the camera, right there on the spot, instead of developing film and waiting for the results. So why do I still take the old Nikon F3 with me on my backyard photo safaris, knowing full well it is more work and less convenient? Make no mistake, it is more work because, to do it right, I use a tripod, since these old cameras were made long before image stabilization. Like so many old school photographers, I have a love/hate relationship with tripods. It's all a matter of potential. Digital cameras with good lenses can take some wonderful pics with all the resolution and color most anyone could want, but a good film SLR with a good lens and some fine grained film can do even better. Digital is great for viewing on the computer, but when it comes time to frame and hang something on the wall, my thirty year old Nikon F3 and 55 mm micro lens cannot be beat, not with any digital camera and printer I have ever tried. I'll just keep using both types of cameras, thank-you very much.
Friday, June 04, 2010Backyard cameras  Like so many other folks, I start my day with coffee, very hot and very black. I also add some birdwatching, via my bird feeders and, this week, I have been adding a bit of color to the mix with flowers that are blooming like gangbusters in our garden. Bill has planted so many different flowers that it would be hard to list them all, but I suspect his favorites are roses, given all the roses in our garden. I guarantee that some of those are going north with us when we move to Rhinelander. My background has always been more on wildflowers than cultivated flowers, but there is something quite intoxicating and addicting to get up each morning and greeted with such a profusion of color and flower types as I sip my coffee. When it becomes just too much to resist, I grab one of the digital cameras for some quick shots and make a mental note to return with the film SLRs and tripods for some more serious work. Unfortunately, that doesn’t always materialize, since the day’s activities usually catch up with me, but, today, I am going to add some macro work on garden flowers to my list of must do activities. Not sure if it is possible to add any more beauty in my life, but I'm sure going to try. Thursday, June 03, 2010Birding spotting scope There was a time when a spotting scope and tripod were my constant companions on my birding trips, right along with my birding binoculars, but those days have somehow disappeared. I still have and use a spotting scope, of course, but I don’t carry it as much as I once did and that is a shame. Over the years, I’ve spotted many rare birds with my birding spotting scopes that I could not have identified with my binoculars, alone. What happened? It’s simple; I changed my birding style from birding on foot to birding mostly on a bicycle. Biking has changed my life is so many ways and overwhelmingly to the good, but, although I have tried, carrying a spotting scope and tripod on a bike is just not too practical. Even carrying a full size binocular around your neck while you bike is hard enough. When you need to go light, you really have to want to carry a spotting scope in the worst way and that also means carrying a tripod, since a spotting scope is useless without a decent tripod. In the meantime, I continue to scout, with my binoculars, along the bike trails for a good marsh or wetland that would give me just the excuse I need to pack the extra weight and bulk of a spotting scope and tripod. I have yet to find my marsh, locally, but I will keep looking. It’s out, there, somewhere. Wednesday, June 02, 2010Summer observing with telescope or binocular A friend of mine asked about observing through a window in his home to do some astronomy to avoid mosquitoes which have been really a nuisance, lately. He knew I used the window observing trick in the winter, now and then, to avoid subzero temperatures and wondered if he could observe through windows with his telescope use to avoid the mosquitoes. Of course, I first of all gave him all the many reasons not not observe through windows for optical reasons and then told him about my attempts to observe through windows, both summer and winter. In the winter, yes, I do some astronomy through the windows with my astronomy binoculars and, less often, with telescopes, since the higher magnifications of a telescope magnify the negatives of viewing though a window. To be sure, using binoculars or telescopes through windows is a desperation technique – windows act as lenses and your optics are only as good as your weakest lens – but staying inside your home and observing through windows is sometimes a more practical and, surely, a more expedient and comfortable way to observe when temperatures are below zero. It is such an imperfect way to observe, optically, though, that I don’t recommend it as a serious way of using binoculars or telescopes. You’ll be much happier with the performance of your binocular or telescope if you use it outside, the way it was meant to be used, even though it means bundling up and braving the cold. I’ve also tried observing through a window from the safety of my home in the summer to avoid mosquitoes. To be sure, those pesky little bloodsuckers can be very bit as much a deterrent to observing as sub-zero cold. Unfortunately, staying inside to observe through a window in summer rarely works. In the summer, the window of prime seeing is usually limited to the sky, directly overhead or within, say, 15 degrees of overhead; the skies lower to the horizon are often too murky or hazy for good viewing, in the summer, even when you are outside. All that heat, dust, smog, humidity and so on seem to accumulate above the horizon to a greater extent in the summer. That’s bad news for window observers because the greater the angle you observe from parallel to the window, the worse the distortion caused by the window and, of course, unless you have skylight windows, you won’t have access to objects directly overhead. In winter, on the other hand, those cold clear skies often bring down the window of good seeing much closer to the horizon, so you can keep the lenses of your binocular or telescope objective parallel to the window glass. All in all, if you want to use a telescope or binocular in the summer, you need to be outside. So, in summer, grab the mosquito repellant and head outdoors. Caution, though! Repellents with DEET can remove or gum up the finish on your binoculars or telescopes. That’s why I use plant based repellants, even though they are not as effective as DEET based repellants. Tuesday, June 01, 2010Old telescope skills, old astronomy books A favorite form of exploration for me, when I get the chance, is to browse in used book stores for old books on telescopes, astronomy binoculars, telescope accessories and the like or, better yet, old star maps and moon maps. Sure, with all these computerized on telescopes, these days, and the constantly updating that goes on in the field of astronomy, many of the books and maps I find contain outdated information, but I really don’t care. I just like those old astronomy and telescope books. It's nostalgia, I guess. Maybe old astronomy books remind of my first days in astronomy, when I eagerly devoured every scrap of information in every book I could find. Those were some great days and I would be hard pressed to say whether I spent more time in my astronomy books or with my telescope. I also run across references in these old books to what I call the “lost skills” in amateur astronomy. These are skills and activities that have fallen by the wayside and gone out of fashion, over the years, in amateur astronomy and now only rarely practiced by amateur astronomers. That's kind of sad. One of these lost skills or arts is, in fact, art, itself. There was a time when nearly everyone, including myself, sketched drawings of what we saw in the eyepiece. It was standard operating procedure for many amateur astronomers and, although my work never made it to the level of art, sketching did make me a better and more critical observer. I suspect that sketching is no longer as popular as it once was because it does require you to slow down and take time with each object and this, in turn, limits you in terms of number of objects you can see in an observing session. This slower approach seems at odds with computerized telescopes and their capability to locate objects, quickly and add more objects to each viewing session. For sure, when I visit astronomy clubs or attend star parties, it is rare to see anyone sketching. Everyone wants to race on to the next object and I’m as guilty as anyone. Seems to be a status thing as to how many objects you can see in each observing session. Things have changed. Another lost art that was once very popular is telescope making. There was a time when making your own telescope was considered very cool and also a good way to save money. Nowadays, though, very few amateurs want to take the time to grind and polish mirrors and assemble a telescope and even the ones that do are faced with a lack of places to buy parts. Moreover, making your own telescope is not that much of a savings, anymore, given all the cheap telescopes that come ready-made out of China. Someday, though, I plan to give it a try, all the same. Maybe it is time for many of us amateur astronomers to slow down a bit. |
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