okiscopey
02-07-2007, 12:34 AM
Gave the jolly old ETX an outing on Saturday evening to view the Venus/Saturn conjunction, check on Jupiter's progress to becoming a star, and rounded off the session by half-blinding myself (and a few interested locals) on the rising full moon. (Forgot the ND filter).
Now it was dark, windy and cold, and time to pack up and attend my 60th birthday dinner with friends. "Mustn't forget to put those away" I said to myself noticing the two Vixen LV's snuggled in the eyepiece holes of the tripod spreader thingey. Of course I immediately forgot about them while fussing around with other stuff.
The next job was to reduce the tripod to more reasonable dimensions for travel. So I upended it, collapsed the legs and transferred everything from the sports oval where I'd been observing to my vehicular apparatus parked on the nearby tarmac. Once on hard ground, I up-ended the tripod again to take off the spreader. Uurrkkk! There was one LV eyepiece just hanging there upside down, held only by the fact it was at a slight angle in its hole. Grabbed it quick smart ... phew!
But where was the other one? A ten-minute search in the grass around the observing site turned it up safe and sound. Was this the luck of the devil or what? They could both have ended up bouncing off the road!
There was a thread recently about 'silly things we've done' - this is just my modest contribution. I do have others!
Now it was dark, windy and cold, and time to pack up and attend my 60th birthday dinner with friends. "Mustn't forget to put those away" I said to myself noticing the two Vixen LV's snuggled in the eyepiece holes of the tripod spreader thingey. Of course I immediately forgot about them while fussing around with other stuff.
The next job was to reduce the tripod to more reasonable dimensions for travel. So I upended it, collapsed the legs and transferred everything from the sports oval where I'd been observing to my vehicular apparatus parked on the nearby tarmac. Once on hard ground, I up-ended the tripod again to take off the spreader. Uurrkkk! There was one LV eyepiece just hanging there upside down, held only by the fact it was at a slight angle in its hole. Grabbed it quick smart ... phew!
But where was the other one? A ten-minute search in the grass around the observing site turned it up safe and sound. Was this the luck of the devil or what? They could both have ended up bouncing off the road!
There was a thread recently about 'silly things we've done' - this is just my modest contribution. I do have others!