Alex Mac

My Pentax 10x50s are noticeably better than my Nikon 12x40s, but I think that's down to better optics than the extra light gathering.

For those who've already bought the Dwarf II, does it incur any import levies? And are there any add-ons that should really be considered at the same time? (Swithering!)

Reliving my boyhood. I first read PM's Guide to the Moon when it was Survey of the Moon. I'd found it in the school library and read it cover to cover. I'd also eagerly devoured his SF novels at around the same time. Not sure how the fiction will hold up with the passage of time, but a flick through the pages of the Guide shows the same enthusiasm that was so infectious decades and decades ago. I'll be saving them for the coming weekend, to settle down as I did as a boy, with my books and a bottle of Vimto and a bag of liquorice all-sorts, reliving the days.

I'm seeing ads (elsewhere) for a gadget for astrophotography with built in tracking and GOTO, costing around £350. Appears to be aimed at people wanting to dip their toes in, and has applications in nature photography and perhaps sports. It's not due to ship until sometime this month, but it would be interesting to get views on this device and perhaps down the line, if anyone with expertise is tempted, reviews. (Not sure about the policy for link posting, but it should be easy to find in the inter-thingy.)

I keep ordering these boxes of lucky polystyrene peanuts from FLO and finding all sorts of random goodies at the bottom.

It's still too early to mention the C word, but never too early for an early C pressie.

Six years ago, my copy cost me £7.50 new from Amazon. What happened since then? Bonkers.

I haven't sold an eyepiece then regretted it, but I have sold a telescope and regretted it. Not for the telescope, which was an average performer, but the Charles Frank equatorial mount that went with it. A beast of a thing, solid, weighty, and with the optional thrust races fitted, smooth in operation. I think it might have withstood a small nuclear explosion.

I've had the Celestial Objects volume 2 (Dover edition) for many years, but took a notion to have the Solar System volume at last. It's out of date of course, but I wanted it for the descriptive writing, which is rather charming and engaging. The cover design is truly awful. Appears to be a facsimile made from a physical copy in the library of the University of California, but legible and serviceable, though looks to be missing a map of the Moon, which may have been a fold-out in the original volume, as there's an index to the map with nearly five hundred features listed, and two blank pages in the Moon chapter.

Snap! I win!

Got a fresh supply of polystyrene peanuts from FLO, and found this at the bottom of it.

It was comments from experienced observers on here that persuaded me to lash out on the Baader zoom, so I'm just waiting for delivery from FLO to try it out. The kit eyepieces on my Evostar are Ok, but a good reminder that eyepieces are in the optical chain and not to be skimped on.

I haven't tried to buy the Kindle version, as I already have the print volumes, but I was able to have Amazon send me the free sample pages.

As a returner after many years of absence (all sorts of things happened), I've discovered after a few nights spent outside with the new optics, that more powerful optical kit is not at the top of my wishlist. It's an observing chair. Well, that came as a surprise to me too. Craning up, kneeling down, all the contortions that didn't bother me years ago, are telling me now that creature comforts are a thing after all.

Do you plan to resilver it or regrind it? My recollection is that the Saturn mirror was spherical. At the time I was poring longingly over the Charles Frank catalogue, it was about £32 tripod mounted. I think it was also sold as an astrograph.

That sounds right. I would have measured the aperture across the inside diameter of the retaining ring that was glued to the end of the tube.

An old thread perhaps, but this was also how I started! It would be around 1963, and desperate for any kind of telescope I could get my hands on as an impecunious schoolboy, I saved my pocket money and bought the Charles Frank Junior Astronomical Telescope. I bought it at the Saltmarket branch in Glasgow. I'd saved up 30 shillings, and it wasn't enough for anything I saw in the shop window. The man behind the counter was a tall, gaunt figure, probably in his fifties, and I told him how much I had and asked if there was anything second hand. He thought for a moment then fetched a yellow and blue box with the Junior Telescope in it and the two free books on astronomy, and said this one was thirty shillings. I bought it eagerly. It was many years before it dawned on me that he had given me a new telescope, not a second hand one, whose retail price then was four guineas. The objective was 1-7/8th inches and the magnification was about x30. It came with a spindly tripod and the telescope was clamped to it by two big C clips. I remember the tripod was awful, but the excitement of the views of the moon more then made up for that. The supplied objective was glass, but replacements (mine had fractured) were plastic. As telescopes go it perhaps on a par with Galileo's. I still have the copy of Frank's Book of the Telescope that came with it, which I read cover to cover many times only to drool at the bigger telescopes and binoculars that were in its pages. That little telescope is long gone, and I wish I'd been more careful with it, but the delight I got from it has lasted a lifetime.