Hi everyone.
Last year during a major clean up I rediscovered my original 60mm refractor from the 1960’s. After much on line research and liberal use of a magnifying glass on the OTA looking for miniscule manufacturer and trademark type identifiers, I worked out that it is a pretty good quality Japanese “Towa” scope that was retailed at the time under the brand name of Denkar. After using it extensively during my youth, I eventually fell prey to all those distractions life throws at you (uni, career, marriage, mortgage, kids etc, etc). While I had got the scope out occasionally through the years (last serious use had been Halleys Comet!) when I found it again last year I put it back together and had a more serious look at some of the familiar objects from my youth (Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Alpha Centauri, the moon and more). This brought back a host of sharp memories and emotions - specifically the joy, excitement and thrills of viewing distant, beautiful and mysterious objects in the night sky – feelings that I know you are all familiar with.
So began a renewed journey back into the wonderful world of stargazing. This time around it has been made even better by the enormous advances in observing options – affordable scopes with large apertures, eyepieces bigger than an inch where you don’t have to look through a pinhole, mounts with the amazing “go to” capability (particularly handy these days in light polluted city skies).
I’ve been obsessively educating myself in all the new technological wonders since early 2015 and steadily spending some of the fruits of the aforementioned career on telescopes, eyepieces and accessories like filters, dew shields, heaters, finder scopes, torches, tables, cases, observing chair and so on and on – it never really stops does it?? – but it’s all good fun.
While I joined IIS almost a year ago and have been lurking since, I have to say I have enjoyed reading the contributions from all the members and have benefitted greatly from reading your views on all things astronomical. I’m pretty well set up now equipment wise (for this month at least
) and am enjoying the fantastic views that modern technology allows. Can’t wait to eventually get out to some dark skies though! Tried last month in the upper Hunter region while visiting friends but of course got clouded out
I’m looking forward to participating more on the forums and throwing my two cents in from time to time
