What's your worst facepalm moment?

[FrenchyArnaud]

Opening this thread for a laugh because I facepalmed this morning. You know, this second of realisation when you are overwhelmed by the sudden evidence "I am an absolute cretin" - facepalm. Share yours! Here is mine : 

Since I build the pier, I have had only 1 clear night to do proper full tests, a full session imaging.  I spent a little time on M101 and as you can see, the colour balance is not quite right, shifted to red. 

That is because I have been battling with a severe light pollution gradient despite a high altitude target and an expensive Optolong L-pro. 
Bit disappointed by this L-pro. It is clearly no match for the city lights. 
As I am building an autofocuser I had to take the OTA off the pier, and I took the camera off the focuser.  Then and only then I realized I forgot to put the filter on. It is still in its box. 

I will leave a scaving review "L-pro optolong, don't buy it, it works ONLY if you take it out of the box AND use it, zero stars." 
F.A.C.E.P.A.L.M. 
I should not be left unsupervised.  🤦‍♂️
 

[Marvin Jenkins]

I once had visitors that expressed a desire to look at the stars. That evening was clear I setup the EQ5 goto.

They seemed fascinated by the whole setup and polar alignment. So I gave it my best outreach presentation/ Brian Cox and then got to thorny issue of not grabbing hold of the scope or kicking the tripod.

It is something I am a bit paranoid about so I may have overdone the warning a little.

Imagine to the surprise of guests when I tripped over the power cable pulling it out of the mount and falling into one of the tripod legs.

I had to go through the whole PA and alignment again in silence but It felt like a stadium of stifled laughter.

Marvin

 

[Stu]

6 minutes ago, Marvin Jenkins said:

I once had visitors that expressed a desire to look at the stars. That evening was clear I setup the EQ5 goto.

They seemed fascinated by the whole setup and polar alignment. So I gave it my best outreach presentation/ Brian Cox and then got to thorny issue of not grabbing hold of the scope or kicking the tripod.

It is something I am a bit paranoid about so I may have overdone the warning a little.

Imagine to the surprise of guests when I tripped over the power cable pulling it out of the mount and falling into one of the tripod legs.

I had to go through the whole PA and alignment again in silence but It felt like a stadium of stifled laughter.

Marvin

 

Happens to us all Marvin, I feel your pain 😱

[Saganite]

Having had several OTA's with tubes cut down to accommodate binoviewers, it is normal for me to forget to put a tube extension in when in cyclops mode.  The worst face palm slap though was spending some time trying extenders of various lengths , wondering why I could not focus and getting more exasperated  and angrier by the minute, only to realize that I still had the OCS screwed into the nosepiece of the diagonal.😳🥵

[900SL]

Led an expedition a few hundred kilometers off road from Dhahran to the top of Wadi SabSab to find the famed sinkholes there. Eventually got there after a few stucks and a lost late arrival only to find (after repeatedly driving around in circles) that they had been filled with concrete and then buried in drifting sand to ensure the very occasional rains didn't drain away.

 

No problem I thought. At least I can do some AP. Shot three hours of Orion, only to realise on looking at the last frame that I'd left the Bahtinov mask on for the last two hours after a refocus

 

Wasn't my best weekend

[Mr Spock]

Fitting a new motor and thinking it was faulty and wanting to return it because it couldn't track fast enough.

Only to realise when it stopped altogether the battery was flat... Doh! 

[wimvb]

Yesterday we had one of those rare clear nights, so I opened the roof of my observatory and started imaging. Yay, as they say.

After about 2.5 hours clouds moved in, but also an aurora, so I closed the roof and put the scope cap on. Then watched the aurora (partly behind clouds) with my daughter. So far nothing unusual.

About an hour later it had somewhat cleared again, so I opened the roof once more. Went inside to do the alignment in Kstars. Failed because of lack of stars. So much for that gap in the clouds, I thought and went out to close the observatory again. Strange, it looked clear enough where I planned to do my imaging. Then I realised I had forgotten to take the cover off my scope. Fixed that and got a few frames in before the clouds really returned.

It's not the first time that has happened to me. Nor the last probably. And of course, I have never, ever, not once forgotten to take the Bahtinov mask off. Definitely not once.

[FrenchyArnaud]

3 hours ago, 900SL said:

left the Bahtinov mask on for the last two hours

I FEEL FOR YOU 🤣🤣🤣 You have no idea how many times I did it. Like, I don't ever learn 🤭

[TerraC]

Last night trying to image the moon with my classic 200p and a mobile phone adapter.  Dropped and smashed my mobile phone on the patio. 😡

 

[tomato]

My second hand Pulsar dome came with a padlock on the shutter which I thought was a good idea. Shortly after motorising the shutter with a rack and pinion arrangement and a substantial drive motor I attempted to open it with yes, you guessed it, the padlock still in place. 
There is now over current protection on the motor.☺️

[FrenchyArnaud]

2 minutes ago, tomato said:

There is now over current protection on the motor.☺️

The very definition of "learning the hard way" Something has to give, the dome, the rail or the motor but it will not be the padlock for sure! 

[tomato]

The pinion jumped out of the rack and bent the bolt holding the idler roller, easy to repair. There is now also  a routine in the control software that waits for a manual test on the limit switch to demonstrate that the padlock has been removed.

[JeremyS]

My facepalm moment was today. It is the first time I’ve come across the word “facepalm” 🤦‍♂️

[DaveS]

I've been tearing my hair out trying to work out why I wasn't getting an image from my QHY 268 after putting it back on the 'scope.

Then I thought to check the reducer (Which is sunk into the focuser)

🤦

[FrenchyArnaud]

38 minutes ago, DaveS said:

Then I thought to check the reducer (Which is sunk into the focuser)

Rooooo! That's a good one! 🤣😂😝🤪

[Captain Scarlet]

Not at all astro-related but I was cycling into work one morning along New King’s Road in London, when all of a sudden something seemed not quite right, my vision seemed weird and unbalanced. It occurred to me I might have lost a lens in my specs, and before I could engage my brain I’d stuck my finger directly onto my Cornea, with predictable  fall-off-your-bike results 🤦‍♂️ 

Magnus

[Stu]

4 hours ago, JeremyS said:

My facepalm moment was today. It is the first time I’ve come across the word “facepalm” 🤦‍♂️

[IB20]

Probably when I first tried my Tak 76DCU, excited as anything but also hoping it delivered the views I’d paid a premium for. Only to not be able to get any eyepiece to focus and nearly laid a brick. Eventually worked out that there was an imaging adapter included which when removed turned it into a visual telescope. 🤦🏼‍♂️🤦🏼‍♂️🤦🏼‍♂️

[Stu]

Plenty from me over the years.

Panicking thinking my brand new 13mm Ethos was a duffer, before remembering to remove the translucent cap off the 1.25” barrel.

Leaving my 8” f8 out under a cover, not realising the wind had picked up and the cover was a very good sail!

Last one that springs to mind was shutting my keys in the boot of my car, along with all my scope kit whilst camping in Dorset on what turned out to be one of the darkest and most transparent nights I can remember. I could have wept as I sat looking up at the Milky Way….

[carastro]

Yesterday when I gathered all my collected imaging data from my two laptops of my dual rig.  I discovered I had taken 46 subs at 300secs binned x 2 when it should have been 600secs unbinned - duh!! 

Luckily I had data from previous 3 evenings and other scope, so mixed it all up.  How did I not notice, especially when I was checking everything on screen from indoors once it was up and running?

Facepalm.

Carole  

Edited February 28, 2023 by carastro

[maw lod qan]

Mine was recent, and fortunately minor.

Wondering what the tremendous crash was, only to find the rolloff roof for Area 51 laying in my broccoli!

I had that thought,"Mama said, stupid is what stupid does!"

Or would "I'm not a smart man!" Be better?

Edited March 1, 2023 by maw lod qan

[pipnina]

22 hours ago, DaveS said:

I've been tearing my hair out trying to work out why I wasn't getting an image from my QHY 268 after putting it back on the 'scope.

Then I thought to check the reducer (Which is sunk into the focuser)

 

🤦

I had something similar happen when I switched from a newt to a refractor.

The GPU coma corrector and the flattener both have the same 55mm backfocus, so I figured I could just take one corrector off, new one on! Job done, time to image.

I had astigmatism lines off axis on my images that looked like they stretched for lightyears!

After a few weeks of imaging without the corrector, not sure WHAT was going on, I realised... The GPU has an m48 thread, the new corrector has an m42... So the 6.5mm of length in my m48->m42 adapter was no longer present!

5 quid on ebay later for an m42 extension tube, all is well haha.

[Moonshed]

My mishap goes back 25 years. I lived near Glasgow where the light pollution was pretty bad. I had just started astrophotography and back then I was of course using a film camera (the younger ones here can Google what that is 😀) and I decided I wanted a photo of the Orion Nebula.
It was a 30 minute drive to the nearest forest where the sky was the darkest for miles around. I set up my gear using the car headlights and then powered my kit using the car battery. Polar alignment was achieved by squinting through a very small lens after twiddling with the time and date rings, it took a good 30 mins. The film roll took 36 pictures and on the first night I used 12. I returned twice more over the next few days until I had used all the film. The problem was that until you got your developed photos back you had absolutely no idea how good the focus was, or the framing or the exposure. All you could see when taking the photo was through the tiny little viewer at the top of the camera. I could just about make out Orion’s Belt through it.

You cannot imagine my pain when having gone to all that trouble, three times, that when I went to wind the film back I realised there wasn’t any film in the camera! This was in part due to the fact that even without a film the picture count would still increase every time you wound the film on, even without a film! A keen eye, in daylight mind, would notice the other dial was not moving.

Such was the pain I still recall every detail, and pain, 25 years on 😉.

More recently I’ve done everything else, to forgetting to remove the Bahtinov mask, forgetting to charge camera battery, forgetting to change from BST and not understanding why the GOTO was so far off, tripping over cables and knocking the mount after precise PA etc etc.

Remind me, why did I go into this hobby😂

 

[Froglord]

I started a similar thread in the "Observing - Discussion" section, so if you need to read a couple more humiliating episodes ...

 

[Nakedgun]

19 hours ago, IB20 said:

Probably when I first tried my Tak 76DCU, excited as anything but also hoping it delivered the views I’d paid a premium for. Only to not be able to get any eyepiece to focus and nearly laid a brick. Eventually worked out that there was an imaging adapter included which when removed turned it into a visual telescope. 🤦🏼‍♂️🤦🏼‍♂️🤦🏼‍♂️

~

Not unusual, Taks have a bewildering array of extension tubes/adapters to wrestle with.

 

 

.