Camping with your scope

[Denni]

Hi folks,

Anna here yet again!

Hope you are all good today and not too busy already.

My favourite past time is cimbing and mountaineering and I'm away most weekends in the summer in North Wales or the Lakes.

So now that I have taken up astronomy, I'd like to take my scope with me. The idea would of course be to use it of an evening and then store it in my quite large expedition dome tent.

The temperature range probably wouldn't be too drastic, usually ranging from 2-10 during the night and then back up to anywhere between 15 and 25 during the day.

I'm thinking that after viewing, I'd probably just bring it straight inside and store it in a separate ventilated room in the tent with the lens caps off, would this be a suitable thing to do?

As someone is always in the tent during the day, I'd rather not pack it up etc and put it back in the car and can't see a problem with just leaving it in the tent. The tent is huge so condensation isn't a problem.

Anyone else take their scope away and what do you do?

Cheers my dears, have a grand day!

Anna x

[Kedvenc]

Hi Anna,

I'm also a climber (spent the last 20 years of my life driving back and forth from Swanage/peak/font etc). I used to sometimes take my 4inch reflector with me. I used to just cap the scope and put it in the tent (I figured that was better than sweaty condensation dripping into the tube). Maybe I should have left he cap off and pointed it downwards, never really had much of a problem as long as the daytime was reasonably bright. In the end even with a small scope it became just more stuff to lug around so now I just keep bins in the car.

[laser_jock99]

Main thing is to make sure it's dry when put away for long periods.

[rowan46]

I have a nexstar5 that comes camping with me no problems. but then I don't use climbers campsites nowadays. we have ehu so cold weather the heater is on, warm weather the fan is on the movement of the air keeps the condensation down