I've also looked like a goose because I couldn't get a carp-o-rama functioning. It was one of those newts with a built in barlow in the focusser (forgotten the name of the design). I've since found that they are a bugger to collimate and the fact that the secondary was not under the focusser and there was no suitable adjustment made it near impossible. Mrs Aspiring Astronomer rabbiting on non-stop in my ear about irrelevant subjects made it impossible.
A few times over the years I've had people express disappointment that they can't get a scope that will show them everything they want to see for $50.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MortonH
A few years I worked in a camera store over the Christmas period. A young woman and her parents came in and expressed an interest in one of the ubiquitous cheap "Tasco type" refractors promising 525x magnification, etc. I politely explained all the shortcomings of the package and ended up selling them a nice Nikon 80mm spotting scope that was on special.
A few days later they brought the Nikon back, complaining that the magnification was too low, couldn't see the flag on the moon, blah blah blah, and returned it in favour of the Tasco. I wonder how happy they were with it.
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Well, I'm pretty sure they would have seen something waving about - no matter where they looked.
BTW my quick, dirty, back of envelope calculation shows you would need a mag of 112,000x to see a 1m flag on the moon assuming you eye's resolution is about 1 arc minute.