Aperture fever, please help

[hes not well again]

Tonight I want to talk to you about aperture fever. As some of you will know someone who is a a sufferer of the disease known as atronomy you will realise that with a modicum of care and of course constant supervision they can be productive members of society. In fact some of my best friends have friends that suffer from astronomy and no one thinks any the worse of them. It is not these poor people that concern me tonight but those who have the more serious form of the disease known as aperture fever. In this the sufferer feels that he must aquire ever larger telescopes until he has lost his job, wife and house in this expensive and fruitless progression. In vain do wiser councils declaim that the best telescope is the one you can use most often. The sufferer is deaf to all entreaties and is often seen lugging over size equipment about the place. Of course as the disease takes hold he is effectively house bound, tied to a huge reflector he can no longer move.

Do you know someone who suffers from this disease? Is he unresponsive to any stimulus except sentences that contain the words pommerianian sludge? Go into his shed, is there a half finished blank for a gigantic mirror in there?

You can help stop more children being sold for medical experiments to fund this obsession and with your help these poor unfortunates can be humanely culled. After all, the inevitable end can only be a tramp like figure slumped in a door way, calling out in a voice ruined by stewed tea and weak lemon squash "can you spare £4,500 for a dob?

ps, Catch my forthcoming lecture tour for astronomers entitled 'what normal people might be like.'

[Ags]

Ha ha!

[perrin6]

Aperture fever is a much neglected issue and the cause of much frustration and unfullfilled longing in society today. I tried to assuage 'the fever' with a (nearly) 14 inch dob but now I am suffering the dreaded 'light pollution disease'. A severe affliction in which the sufferer is constantly aware that precious photons from faint galaxy spiral arms that have travelled millions of light years from the depths of the cosmos only to be lost amidst a million streetlight photons. This affliction, in it's severest form, sometimes results in the carting away by men in white coats of people desperately and hopelessly chucking rocks at street lamps, neon signs and other horrors while frothing at the mouth and bleating like lost lambs the words ' I want the dark.... I want the dark ' over and over again.

[tibbs1972]

Hillarious, I'm rolling around on the floor. It's like looking in a mirror.

Anybody got a spare 10" dob.

[hes not well again]

I feel your pain, let us band together and hijack the hubble. Incidentally the street lamp next to my house may become astonishingly accident prone

[ixalon]

Relapse time, and I was doing so well - someone just had to go mention aperture and mirrors. Oh, if I only had the size of house/garden/mount/transport/3rd-kidney-to-sell for RobH's 20" mirror set... It brings me out in hives just thinking about it.

[hes not well again]

Oh the humanity, I am reminded of a night last winter in my favorite observing place, a bronze age enclosure. Trees shielding light from Glasgow ten miles to the west. The stars blazing down without a waver. My elderly sheepdog whining briefly to show she is bored before curling up to lose herself in dreams of rabbits and flatulence. Me, my eight inch newty and Mozarts requiem on the ipod. And of course the whole universe laid on for my pleasure. How can it be wrong when it feels so right?

[Moonshane]

your description is perfection indeed. what a great night - you just need a bigger dob.

[hes not well again]

Aaaaaah, ha, haha. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

[John]

I had a look through a 20" dob last year at the SGL Star Party and I caught a nasty dose of aperture fever after that - the views of M13 and M51 through that scope will be "haunt" me for years .

This was partially treated by using smaller scopes under really dark skies at this years star party and realising that you can "grow" your scopes aperture by getting it under dark skies

Another partial "cure" has been visualising myself trying to get a scope as large as a small car out of our french windows and onto the patio

[tibbs1972]

Grow your Scope, sounds like a mix of Sky at Night & Gardeners World.

P.S. If only it was that easy.

[John]

...P.S. If only it was that easy.

A couple of us spent a night at this years SGL Star Party with our 6" scopes and picked off loads of DSO's including some pretty faint galaxies. I reckon my 6" then was performing around the same as my 10" does from my back garden on an an average night.

I've just got to pursuade all my neighbours to go to bed and switch all their lights off at 8:00 pm on clear nights now

[David Smith]

Have to admit I have spent a lot of time "studying" the Skywatcher 16" Flextube on FLO website lately. Could I really spend that much on a scope? But imagine the views!

To be continued...

[hes not well again]

Tush and pshaw! My point was, if I can be said to have one, is that its not how big it is, its how you use it. Some help you lot are. Damn, I've accidentally logged on to FLO under the 'stupidly large telescopes section.'