What's your worst facepalm moment?

[Nakedgun]

1 hour ago, Moonshed said:

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😂

 

~

Oh yes, film! In the early 90s a partial solar eclipse was visible from my home and so of course I took photos. Except, I didn't take photos, as I had neglected to load film beforehand.

Nothing like a missed opportunity!

 

 

.

[Moonshed]

20 minutes ago, Nakedgun said:

~

Oh yes, film! In the early 90s a partial solar eclipse was visible from my home and so of course I took photos. Except, I didn't take photos, as I had neglected to load film beforehand.

Nothing like a missed opportunity!

 

 

.

SNAP!

[Les Ewan]

Although I've been observing and using a multitude of telescopes for 50 years I made a really stupid mistake only yesterday in the early hours.

I was setting up my Synscan and decided to use Pollux as my first alignment star. Without really thinking I slewed to Pollux (or so I thought). After centring my it on my target with the finder  try as I might I couldn't focus in on it in the main scope. Then I realised the dot looked a bit like Mars complete with a white cap! Then it dawned on me it was Mars! In my rush to get the annoying alignment process done I mistook Mars and Al Nath for Castor and Pollux even though neither are even similar in magnitude(although to my credit the gap  is about the same). At this moment I'm still in two minds on whether to submit this embarrassing rookie mistake but here goes....  

[Les Ewan]

On 01/03/2023 at 16:43, Nakedgun said:

~

Oh yes, film! In the early 90s a partial solar eclipse was visible from my home and so of course I took photos. Except, I didn't take photos, as I had neglected to load film beforehand.

Nothing like a missed opportunity!

 

 

.

I was attempting to photograph the 1999 fireball display of Leonids and would have done so too only when I developed the film every single frame was completely out of focus.🤬

I really rue that mistake as to this day I have still to capture a meteor.

[cajen2]

On 01/03/2023 at 17:04, Moonshed said:

SNAP!

....or not.....

[jjohnson3803]

Relatively minor - no damage done - but I left a nebular filter in place and couldn't figure out why stars looked so dim during my next observing session.  My first thought was the scope had somehow gotten damaged.  🤡

 

[Mr Spock]

Just spent five minutes trying to find the sun in the scope without any luck. Only to realise I'd left the cap on the end... 

[Moonshed]

27 minutes ago, Mr Spock said:

Just spent five minutes trying to find the sun in the scope without any luck. Only to realise I'd left the cap on the end... 

couldn’t find the sun here either, cloudy.

[John]

Some of my eyepieces have hybrid 1.25 inch + 2 inch barrels (see pic below, credit: Roger Vine of Scopeviews). More than once I have left the dust cap on the 1.25 inch barrel and found myself wondering how the seeing had deteriorated so fast 🙄

Saturn viewed through a couple of mm of soft translucent plastic is not improved I can tell you 😲

I now use such eyepieces in 2 inch mode with black 2 inch dust caps - not so easy to forget to take off !

 

 

[JeremyS]

2 hours ago, John said:

Some of my eyepieces have hybrid 1.25 inch + 2 inch barrels (see pic below, credit: Roger Vine of Scopeviews). More than once I have left the dust cap on the 1.25 inch barrel and found myself wondering how the seeing had deteriorated so fast 🙄

Saturn viewed through a couple of mm of soft translucent plastic is not improved I can tell you 😲

I now use such eyepieces in 2 inch mode with black 2 inch dust caps - not so easy to forget to take off !

 

 

Been there done that. As I think has Stu.

[Astronomist]

I was confused when I first used my 16mm UWAN that the focal length seemed to be dramatically less than 16mm. It took me several minutes to realise that there was in fact a Barlow in the focuser. 🤦‍♂️