[mental4astro (Alexander)]

I set up a Mak tonight at a local park in Vaucluse where I'm living at the moment.. Something I've done a few times now in the last few months. All was well for just 10 minutes when cops started appearing, not just on foot but with PolAir too.

Vaucluse has a very high Jewish population. And unfortunately many of these folk are understandably very anxious at the moment. And just like the majority of any population, most people don't recognize what we use as a telescope. To them a telescope is what a pirate uses. But show up with an odd looking mount and a strange contraption wrapped in "foil", with a fellow being very attentive looking at it up close, and in the dark, and their first thought is "suspicious activity".

Despite the first cop walking around me and saying "just a bloke with a telescope looking at the Moon, more cops appeared soon after, and then the PolAir chopper circled around me for 15 minutes before moving on.

There must have been many calls made to the cops in the two hours I was there.

It is not the first time this has happened to me. A few years back I had the blooming Spooks called on me, and these blighters are all James Bond with their crap.

I have no problem with the police. But at the moment with the conflict that is developing in the middle east, there are some very anxious folks who see anything they don't recognise as suspicious and threatening. Especially if you are using an computer controlled goto eq mount, with cameras and wires going everywhere, you looking very attentively at the computer, tap-tap-tapping away on the keyboard the scope slewing around automatically and unexpectedly, you may be in for a very rude shock if the cop who comes by to see what is going on gets rather spooked by what they see and don't understand.

Alex.