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Time To Confess...Come On, You Can Do It!


Mr Q

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Non-Astro

I used to walk home from the station on my way from work. A week or two after I'd moved house I walked straight past my new house for about half a mile to my old house. Whilst walking up it's path, fondling for my door keys in my pocket, and thinking I needed to cut the grass, it suddenly dawned on me I was at my old house. So sheepishly looking around to see if anyone noticed I did an about turn and walked home feeling a right idiot.

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Didn't tighten up the bolts on the dovetail clamp then pointed the scope up at the sky - slid out and crashed onto the floor! Thankfully the mount was at its lowest setting and I was inside just testing a few things so it fell on the carpet. Only thing that broke was the cross-hair in the finder. Phew!

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When I received my set of eyepieces and filters I started playing with the ep on the telescope. Then I took out the filter, looked at it and put it on top of the ep. It took me a minute to realize where it was supposed to be :)

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And the winner is......!

At least of the non-astro event! Unless you count gazing through beer glasses?  :grin:

Cheers

Well, if the glasses had beer in them, I guess you would win that category :grin:

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Astro:

I offered to help someone collimate their newt, as they were scared to do it.  I really wanted to reassure this guy that it is not that hard...  I started by undoing the mirror lock screws.  But I was actually undoing all of the collimation screws and the mirror went so far out that it took me an hour to get it back and fully collimated.  After that the new guy said he would never ever attempt to do it himself ever.  I felt such a plonker.  I think he even sold the newt and bought a refractor!

Non - Astro:

I walk fast.  Nothing I can do about it, it's just the way I move.  If I'm out with my family, I'm always ahead and they're always telling me to slow down.  A few weeks ago we were walking to a café and I was ahead as usual.  I went in first and got a cracking smile off this nice looking girl, who then invited me to sit down.  Blimey! Took a few seconds for me to click that she thought I was her internet date.  She looked quite put out when I sat at another table, and then this turned to embarrassment for both of us as soon as my wife and son wandered in about a minute later... 

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At age 13 I focused my 30x40 shop front refractor on an exceptionally bright object low in the western sky, just after sunset. It appeared fuzzy and seemed to sport a tail. I sketched it and sent a report off to a national observatory claiming the object to be a comet!

The polite reply stated "most likely Venus."

(One hell of a big comet.)

Special Effects by Chromatic Aberation Inc.

Nope, sharing this has not helped one bit Dr. Phil!

Brian Down Under.

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At age 13 I focused my 30x40 shop front refractor on an exceptionally bright object low in the western sky, just after sunset. It appeared fuzzy and seemed to sport a tail. I sketched it and sent a report off to a national observatory claiming the object to be a comet!

The polite reply stated "most likely Venus."

(One hell of a big comet.)

Special Effects by Chromatic Aberation Inc.

Nope, sharing this has not helped one bit Dr. Phil!

Brian Down Under.

   Hey, most boys that age are doing all kinds of nasty things with their scopes...like maybe "accidently" scanning along the horizon and ending up peering into a bedroom window of a neighbor :evil:  Yea, I confess, but at that age my hormones were buzzing around inside me like electrons around a nucleus - what can I say :confused:   At least what happened to you showed a lot of interest in the night sky :smiley:  Now if your report happened to appear in the local paper.... :eek:

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I set up one afternoon a month or so back and without realising it, the sun came round and fried the reticle in my Telrad. I had been so careful to put the caps on everything else:o<br />

Fortunately managed to fit a new one so not too bad.<br />

<br />

Sent from my GT-P5110 using Tapatalk<br />

<br />

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These stories of you guys driving to dark sites and leaving vital bits behind remind me of the time I drove off fishing and left my float box behind.

What's so bad about that? Some of my biggest fresh water fish were caught on the bottom...not to mention a lot of other things I snagged while running a "jelly worm" along the bottom :grin:   Enough of this off topic stuff - back to stars :rolleyes:

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Most embarrassing event was at my first star party, proudly pointed and announced to all " There's Jupiter ! " to notice the flashing aviation lights as it approached head on.

Really worse when you make out that you know what you're doing. I looked at NGC 2903 in a Celestron 9.25 and proudly announced that it looked much better in my 10". " I'll show you", after simply ages I was still trying to find it,

Old Nick, cringeworthy.

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Seeing a bright planet in the twilight, with a tiny star by the side of it, I confidently said to the Mrs, 'Gosh, the seeing must be good, you can see one of Jupiter's moons with the naked eye!'

Even she looked at me as if I was a bit mad. It was early, and by the time I had woken up properly I realized it was Venus just near a background star. Doh!

Oh, and another one, confidently telling her that a Chinese lantern was the ISS. I was convinced, until another four or five flew over :-).

Last one, shutting my keys in the boot of my car, along with all my Astro kit on a spectacular clear night whilst camping in Dorset. Nearly blubbed :-(

Stu

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At a public starparty, dovetail snapped mounted with an ETX105, whilst tightening up the saddle plate on my TeleOptic Giro. The ETX105 rear cell assembly was damaged  :huh: upon impact with the ground. The primary & secondary cell, menisucus cell and OTA survived  :shocked: and me cursing and swearing  :cussing:

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