I am not a professional astronomer, but I sure love stargazing – and I learn something new every time! Beside my naked eye I don’t have a lot of tools, but those I do have I’m pretty proud of. Which tools do you have?
When my Dobsonian telescope arrived
Me with my Dob
I have the Orion XT10 Classic Dobsonian telescope. The 10″ aperture lets in a nice amount of light. I have never owned a computerized alignment system, but I love the way my manual Dob teaches me to navigate the sky and find things myself (with the help of a red laser finder and a good old-fashioned sky map.)
I love using a variable filter to admire the moon’s craters on a full moon-ish night. When the skies are darker, I like to hunt for deep space objects. Since I live in a big city, my boyfriend gave me a Narrowband filter last Christmas to cut out light pollution.
And when the scope is too big to pack around, I pull these out of my car trunk – a pair of binoculars from my Dad!
My binoculars
What would be on my wish list for the future? Here are some items I’d love to have!
- Solar filters for sun viewing
- Color filters for enhanced planet viewing
- An astro camera for solar system and deep space
- An awesome lawn chair for binocular time
