visitors

[Ags]

Oyr elderly neighbours came visiting tonight. The husband has been keen for some time to look through my telescope. The reason being that he has dry macular degeneration, which is incurable and progressively destroys the central part of the vision.

It seemed that clouds would block all viewing but I set up earlier so the telescope was tracking Jupiter. Eventually at 22.30 Jupiter popped out from the clouds, at first shining weakly through the have but eventually it shone brightly. The 4SE had tracked perfectly for an hour and Jupiter was still in the middle of the EP! Our neighbour managed to make out the NEB and SEB despite his vision troubles, and we think we both saw a shadow transit south of the SEB. He was most pleased of all to see three of the moons of Jupiter.

He was telling us about the perfect dark skies of Holland during WWII, when the Nazis cut the electricity! His father had made a 6 inch reflector before the war, but he had not looked through a telescope for years.

Hopefully we can have them around again the next time the moon is well placed.

[Skylook123]

What a great thing to do! Words fail to properly acknowledge this opportunity. Bless you!

[brantuk]

A touching story and lovely gesture on your part. Credit to you

[Beulah]

I hope you will have a clear sky soon!!

[Ags]

My typing is terrible - I wanted to edit my post to fix some of the typos but the Edit button has disappeared...?

It was very touching, and made me think (1) how lucky I am to have no serious eye problems and (2) there's no point waiting around to do the things you want to do.

[Charon]

Well done Ags, that was a nice gesture.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Excellent stuff Ags, well done indeed. Outreach is always great, but this is something special.

Cheers,

Michael

[Peter Drew]

It's quite possible that someone suffering from macular degeneration will be able to use a telescope successfully as the problem is similar to that of telescopic central obstruction, in other words seeing round it. Some years ago I was experimenting on behalf of an elderly MD sufferer who was unable to drive of enjoy watching TV but was able to use binoculars. I made him an aluminium "glasses" frame and mounted small modified pocket binoculars to them which worked quite well, at least for TV!

[moflaher]

In fact, your neighbour probably have well preserved peripheral vision, and he will be able to see faint objects with more ease than us. I think this is possible because he is probably used to resort to an averted gaze to sense contrast, light or movement.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

As I understand it, it affects the retina, so it is very different from central obstruction, and much more like knocking out the central region of a CCD. However, if you can map the central image to the periphery of the retina (e.g. by magnifying or shifting the image) you can certainly improve matters, because the brain can learn to work with the new mapping of visual information.

Good idea to use modified binoculars in that way, Peter!

[StuW]

My maternal grandfather is blind in one eye and is developing cataracts in the other and often told me about how he loved looking at the night sky when he was in Egypt in WWII, you've given me something to think about for when my 200p arrives... well done that man!