Monday, September 28, 2009

Welcome to the newest Member of our Family:

Do you remember Kojak with Telly Savalas. Well, the newest addition to this family is called Tele Scope!


Steve has always been interested in astronomy – he likes reading about them and we have been to the Planetarium a few times but not all that often. A few years ago I brought home a UK magazine called Sky & Telescope that he read every time.

About 2 weeks ago, he went up to Didsbury, a small town about 45 minutes north of Calgary, to look at some telescopes. He came home with a little one for $75 and I thought that was that. WRONG! BIG TIME WRONG! He got bitten by the telescope bug.

Apparently he came home and ordered a telescope from the States. It arrived a few days later – the case itself is about 3 feet by 1 ½ feet by 1 ½ feet. It looks like a small steamer trunk. On Friday, he and his friend Bert drove to Didsbury again and brought home the mount. I don’t yet know how much the scope itself cost but apparently the mount cost about $1,600 so I guess the scope itself was at least the much if not more. And this is from the man who can’t stand the cold – it is supposed to snow this weekend so I don’t think he will get much use out of it in the near future.

I wanted it out of the living room so I could vacuum so it got moved to the guest room. We now have to keep the blind in the guest room closed so it doesn’t harm the scope! I hope none of our guests suffer from being in the dark.

The entire thing now needs a power source so the GPS can follow the stars or some such thing – I am afraid that my mind glazes over after I hear the words “and now I need”.

Because it weights quite a bit (the mount is about 40-50 pounds without the scope), Steve can’t move it himself so he has to rely on James to help. I asked what will happen with James moves out – apparently by then he will have a small observatory in the backyard – does it never end.

The pink stick in the photos if my yard/meter stick so you can see just how big this silly thing is.

Oh, apparently one of the greatest thing about this scope is that you can attach a camera directly to it!

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