A new hobby . . .

I've always been fascinated by the night skies . . . gosh, since I was little kid. My family got me into star gazing. We lived in Gettysburg, PA and could walk to portions of the battlefield that offered "good seeing" as they say in this hobby. My most vivid memories of "the early years" include seeing Sputniks 1 and 2 . . . waiting hours laying on blanket in a meadow for them to pass. I remember spotting a comet from our backyard using nothing more than a pair of "opera glasses" as an aid.

I was blessed to see the northern lights in the 1970's. Ironically, from my former residence just outside Gburg. My buddy and I had just returned from a weekend fishing trip and were enjoying a few more brews in my driveway so as not to wake up my kids. My ex saw it too, so no one can say we were tripping out on Andecker beer. What an amazing light show!

Having spent decades in a field artillery unit, with fire missions going on for hours after midnight, I eventually passed the "dead air" time standing around the gun line by learning constellations, awaiting metor showers, etc. One evening, I saw a metorite "split" or "Y" as it streaked across the heavens . . . several of my gun bunny buddies saw it too. Pretty cool.

I'm the neighborhood guy who goes out at all kind of hours to look for conjunctions, comets, eclipses, and other celestial events nobody else seems to give a shit about . . . but it's funny how they ask if I saw I saw them, and what were they like, and did I take a photo?

Well . . . it's finally time to graduate from binoculars and telephoto camera lenses to an honest-to-goodness telescope! I've been researching them for several months. This is potentially a very expensive hobby to take to the next level. The techie that I am almost surely guarantees that I'll have to have a computer-assisted "go to" scope mount. I'm fairly sure that refractor scopes will best serve me for entry level and have narrowed my choices to 3 scopes. 3.1" Celestron, 6" Celestron (yard cannon), and Orion 3.1" ED/Apo. I'll probably go with the 3.1" aperature and now it's only a question of resolving a few other minor preference items. It's be another month or 2 until my astro-budget will allow me to make a purchase, but in the mean time, I've downloaded all the owner's manuals and continue to study and compare features.

This should be fun!!!