101 moments of total frustration

[RikM]

53) going on a trip with the Dob to a lovely dark spot by the coast for an observing evening with a sailing club only to find you've left the dew shield at home and the secondary lasted all of an hour and a half before being completely coated and useless.

[wheresthetorch?]

54. Perfecting a 3 star alignment with the GOTO and finding the first target neatly centred in the eyepiece. Then turning round to get a different eyepiece, and kicking the tripod. I've done this soooo many times!

[shellfish]

55 saving for 3 years for a good dob and having your parents say " spend it on the kids we will get you one for christmas..." then un-rapping a lovley 60mm refractor...

Cant sell it to quick they would get upset lol

[phat tony]

th56: the wife buys you a new scope for your birthday, it will not fit right in the car so you decide to take the 8 seater that is out of tax to the dark spot on this best night of the year, never see anyone ever at the spot EVER, when you stop the car that second the garda (police) pull up beside you and do you for no tax and 30 minutes later they go, you have a big fine in hand the sky is total clouds, so sad almost cried:icon_confused: wife laughed and kids too. :o:)

[MrTreyLynch]

57: watching your friend wit no astronomy knowledge drop your dob down a flight of stairs and ask if its okaay................. oddly enough, yes it was!

[paul mc c]

58. Nice clear dark night,wait on the family going to bed for the night,eyes really dark adapted hunting the faintest fuzzies you can see,then some one turns the bathroom light on,quickly cover your eyes wait for them to turn the light off,wait....then realise they have went back to bed with out doing it,leaving you to run in and do it your self.....dark adapted eyes gone for anather half an hour!

[Helen]

59 - Tonight - forget to plug the dew heaters back in after doing darks yesterday during the day and so get completely dewed/frozen just at the point where the guiding graph was looking quite nice :)

Helen

[pajr777]

60) Doing a 'meridian flip' and then realising the importance of tightening the finger screws on the focuser - as the plossi and barlow tumble to the patio

[cathalferris]

61) After a few weeks of college assignments and work obligations eating into any observing time, the forecast is for a clear and steady (and warm!) night, but the girlfriend then announces that we are going to a night out for one of her friends after getting engaged. There's no getting out of it, and it's beautifully clear throughout the evening, then as the evening winds down the sky starts to show a lot of high cloud..

62) Months after months of cloudy periods with the odd sunny day, but every clear day turns to an evening of lots of high cirrus that thickens just enough after dark that the brightest stars are visible with little coronas, and the planets are balls of mush. It's a tease, seeing that blue sky turn to something worse than grey rainclouds..

[Si Rollett]

I can see some of theses things happening to me go me to come

[MrTreyLynch]

58. Nice clear dark night,wait on the family going to bed for the night,eyes really dark adapted hunting the faintest fuzzies you can see,then some one turns the bathroom light on,quickly cover your eyes wait for them to turn the light off,wait....then realise they have went back to bed with out doing it,leaving you to run in and do it your self.....dark adapted eyes gone for anather half an hour!

I live in apartment so my neighbors are no stranger to a 3 am phone call of "turn those ******* lights off!!!". They are close friends by the way and are usually outside anyway lol

[stevetynant]

63) Getting up with a hangover after wasting the best observing night for ages

64) ordering the new lens you can't wait to try out and waiting, and waiting, and waiting only to find it was not in stock in the first place.

65) having to leave your group observing site early only to find some huge meteorite had flashed across the night sky 20 minutes after you had to go

[skybadger]

99, Setting up, aligning the mount and spending hours calibrating the guider while maxim refuses to recogniuse any of the stars in teh field of view of the imager. Finally gettinga star calibrated and the power pack dies. (SGL7)

100, Setting up, carefully levelling the mount, aligning it and then operating it. Get up in the morning to find one foot of the tripod has sunk in teh course of the night so all tracking is off.. (also SGL7)

101, Opening the dome, turning on the scopes, slewing to a planet and aligning before swapping to the imaging camera. Completely and utterly failing to find the planet in the field of view of the imager. For hours. (frequent)

more I'm sure.

Mike

[RikM]

Setting up, carefully levelling the mount, aligning it and then operating it. Get up in the morning to find one foot of the tripod has sunk in teh course of the night so all tracking is off.. (also SGL7)

I had that happen to me at SGL6, irritating much

[wheresthetorch?]

69 (I think). Tripping over the lead from powetank to scope on an occasion when I had stupidly left the powertank on the table. Cue powertank crashing to the patio, smashing the red light cover and therefore ruining my dark adaption. I guess it could have been worse!!

[stevetynant]

70) taking your "not so experienced" friend to a dark sky site on a mountain in Mid Wales and not setting up for at least half an hour as there's helicopters with search lights coming towards you and then finally having to admit that it was Venus and Jupiter with the clouds rushing by in the wind and blowing your own lack of knowledge wide open.

[pastiche]

26. Going out to see the meteor shower.

Set up your chair and gaze wistfully to the south.

You just know the all the action is to to north, until you turn around that is!

[pastiche]

Should my number 26 be 71?

[sanmatt]

72) Taking hours and hours of lights and darks. Thinking how great it will all look, cos the skies were beautifully clear and seeing was good.

Only to get home and realise you hadnt pushed in the remote shutter far enough. And you for got to change the dial to M on the camera. And you hadnt noticed not actually hearing that the shutter wasnt opening and closing. And so you got absolutely nothing.

[rfdesigner]

73: star testing the new homebrew mount drive, nearly there, turn round to set it going on the laptop.. trip on a cable, look at it and realise I've broken the wire so end up doing "dark sky soldering"

74: having got the mount autoguiding then got the camera set up and so on then have the hand controller go down on me becasue it's covered in ice (bare PCB at the mo)

75: back when I manually guided onto film.. with back aching towards the end of a one hour shot, the photo scope slips on it's mount so all the stars drag wrecking the shot.

76: getting the film back to see that your focussing method didn't work and you have 24 one hour shots all slightly out of focus.. by exactly the same amount.

I'm sure I can come up with more.

[Double Kick Drum]

77. Cat poo stopped play. Cats have been doing their business in the lawned area of our garden recently and a few sessions ago I had the mis-fortune of landing square in one. I only noticed in the dark when I started thinking "why do I smell of poo?". It followed me around and I had to break the session up for fear of kneeling in what I couldn't see and had probably trodden everywhere. I couldn't bring it into the house and my trainers stayed outside for a week in disgust after having great difficulty removing them in the dark. The only time I have left the scope out overnight.

Needless to say, counter measures have been taken. We shall see if they work!

78. Coming home after midnight for a session, only to discover neighbours fancied a bonfire that went on until 1:30am.

[kev]

79 Being wide awake at 3am - when its cloudy and raining - consistently!

[Si Rollett]

79 Being wide awake at 3am - when its cloudy and raining - consistently!

Like now!

[stevetynant]

its a bank holiday weekend what do we expect

Sent from my GT-I9000 using Tapatalk

[Mr Moff]

Bank holiday,the joy.

I predict I shall mostly be reading on here judging by the clouds overhead at the moment.