Now that I am living off the grid (without commercially provided electricity or other utilities), I have been in the habit of going to bed soon after dark. But sometimes depending on when the moon rises and sets, I stay up late to look at the sky. Late night for me is around 8 or 9 PM. Or I wake and go outside early, nowadays around 3 am. That is early enough to give me plenty of time to look at stars before the sky becomes murky around 4 am.
In the morning my routine is to go outside with a start chart and a red light and spot the labelled constellations (e.g. Orion, Gemini, Taurus, and the Pleiades which are the most prominent eastern constellations about this hour). Then I consult a more detailed star atlas for the major stars, nebulae and Messier objects. I have already learned the constellations and many of the stars and other objects that I can spot with the naked eye or even binoculars -- their names, positions within their respective constellation, and some astronomical trivia about them. Then I build a fire in the wood stove in the cabin for making breakfast and coffee. That, and I have taken up daily (early morning) meditation practice using the meditation techniques I learned in the Buddhist (Tibetan) church that I used to attend.
So I'm pretty close to hitting a wall with respect to the usefulness of the 50x Bushnell field binoculars. I've spotted nearly everything interesting that they are capable of resolving. So I would like to have a telescope. My requirements are that the telescope have a large aperture, a couple of eye pieces, and excellent optics. It has to be rugged and cheap to buy or build. Because of the lack of electricity here -- obviously there is no solar power at night, and the batteries that have been charging all day won't power anything power-hungry for long, my telescope cannot be motorized or computerized. As for prices, most good ones start at around $4000 new.
Strangely, it is kind of hard to find a telescope without a either a computer or motor drive built into it at any price. Even beginner telescopes with crappy optics have these features (computers, tiny digital cameras, and motors). Manufacturers must have conspired to include these bells and whistles so that they can jack up the price by another $1000 or more. By the way, those features are only needed by a very few hobbyists -- those who are into astrophotography or maybe comet hunters or something. But I think the advertising targets those who can't or won't use star charts and the spotting scope that is traditionally mounted on the side of the main tube of most telescopes.
Maybe on Craigslist I can find a good used one for 500-1000. But I would have to deal with transportation to the seller (finding a ride and driving for hours), testing it on a star to check for flaws in the optics. Or, I could build one from readily available parts.
A backpacker I met on the Pacific Crest trail was telling me that a good, easy to build telescope is the Dobsonian telescope. This telescope features a simple design and was popularized by the amateur astronomer John Dobson starting in the 1960s. Dobson's telescope is a base-mounted (alt-azimuth) Newtonian (reflecting) telescope. It is easy to manufacture from readily available components, and is large, portable, rugged, and low-cost. It would cost $200 to build (less if I can manage to grind my own mirrors). And it is easy to set up (collimate) on a first star viewing.
Not only that, but the design is optimized for visually observing faint, deep sky objects such as nebulae. This type of observation requires a large objective diameter (i.e. light-gathering power) of relatively short focal length. Also, I think it is useless in light-polluted urban areas, so the portability was needed (Dobson lives in San Francisco.) for travel to relatively less light polluted locations.
Anyway, researching a design, gathering the parts, and building my own is going to be my project for a couple of days this month.
In the morning my routine is to go outside with a start chart and a red light and spot the labelled constellations (e.g. Orion, Gemini, Taurus, and the Pleiades which are the most prominent eastern constellations about this hour). Then I consult a more detailed star atlas for the major stars, nebulae and Messier objects. I have already learned the constellations and many of the stars and other objects that I can spot with the naked eye or even binoculars -- their names, positions within their respective constellation, and some astronomical trivia about them. Then I build a fire in the wood stove in the cabin for making breakfast and coffee. That, and I have taken up daily (early morning) meditation practice using the meditation techniques I learned in the Buddhist (Tibetan) church that I used to attend.
So I'm pretty close to hitting a wall with respect to the usefulness of the 50x Bushnell field binoculars. I've spotted nearly everything interesting that they are capable of resolving. So I would like to have a telescope. My requirements are that the telescope have a large aperture, a couple of eye pieces, and excellent optics. It has to be rugged and cheap to buy or build. Because of the lack of electricity here -- obviously there is no solar power at night, and the batteries that have been charging all day won't power anything power-hungry for long, my telescope cannot be motorized or computerized. As for prices, most good ones start at around $4000 new.
Strangely, it is kind of hard to find a telescope without a either a computer or motor drive built into it at any price. Even beginner telescopes with crappy optics have these features (computers, tiny digital cameras, and motors). Manufacturers must have conspired to include these bells and whistles so that they can jack up the price by another $1000 or more. By the way, those features are only needed by a very few hobbyists -- those who are into astrophotography or maybe comet hunters or something. But I think the advertising targets those who can't or won't use star charts and the spotting scope that is traditionally mounted on the side of the main tube of most telescopes.
Maybe on Craigslist I can find a good used one for 500-1000. But I would have to deal with transportation to the seller (finding a ride and driving for hours), testing it on a star to check for flaws in the optics. Or, I could build one from readily available parts.
A backpacker I met on the Pacific Crest trail was telling me that a good, easy to build telescope is the Dobsonian telescope. This telescope features a simple design and was popularized by the amateur astronomer John Dobson starting in the 1960s. Dobson's telescope is a base-mounted (alt-azimuth) Newtonian (reflecting) telescope. It is easy to manufacture from readily available components, and is large, portable, rugged, and low-cost. It would cost $200 to build (less if I can manage to grind my own mirrors). And it is easy to set up (collimate) on a first star viewing.
Not only that, but the design is optimized for visually observing faint, deep sky objects such as nebulae. This type of observation requires a large objective diameter (i.e. light-gathering power) of relatively short focal length. Also, I think it is useless in light-polluted urban areas, so the portability was needed (Dobson lives in San Francisco.) for travel to relatively less light polluted locations.
Anyway, researching a design, gathering the parts, and building my own is going to be my project for a couple of days this month.
