So far, So Good…
…ness gracious me but it’s COLD!! The skies have cleared beautifully. Out came the £14.99 special as soon as the mandatory kisses and hello’s and “What time do you call this?“‘s were over with.
And I suppose we now begin the all important learning curve, and kick right off with lesson one.
LESSON ONE:
Finding anything in the eyepiece is really hard. This was using 18x magnification. You look in the sky and see a couple of stars, you look through the eyepiece and there seems like millions. And although you would think that the brighter stars you first saw would stand out, that aint necessarily the case. Moving the telescope even slightly means a jump of light years, and using higher magnification only makes it worse. Also at higher mag, it takes longer for the wobbles to stop being evident.
But eventually you find something. I found Mars tonight. There he was all tiny and tinkly, so I meticulously focused and focused and stopped breathing and slowed my heart to one beat a minute, and there he was. All tiny and tinkly. Here is an important tip. If you call somebody to come check out the miracle of Mars, or the jolliness of Jupiter, or the serenity of Saturn, then make sure they are near at hand. I called No.1 Wife. Now, No.1 wife is supremely beautiful, Venus herself, but is found somewhat wanting when it comes to the finer things in life. I first noticed this whilst traversing a spectacular valley. It was autumn, and and the crisp October air brought added voracity to the colours of the trees. Every sense was overloaded with the tapestry of colour, with the touch of the breeze, with the rustle of the leaves, with the scent of the last of summer’s nectar. You could even taste the atmosphere. Crowds had gathered to savour this unique day, this sensual feast. Glowing with the warmth that only comes when nature takes her gloves off and hits you with everything she has, I turned to No.1 Wife, and purred, “How was it for you?”
The look in her eyes told me her mind was elsewhere, probably concerned with the ironing or something. With a swift glance at her nails she offered her view of the day. “If you’ve seen one tree, you’ve seen them all……”
So I knew impressing her wasn’t gonna be easy. And so it was. About 30 seconds had elapsed since I blurted out “MARS!! Honey, COME SEE!! It’s MARS!” What I didn’t reckon on was that in that 30 seconds, Mars had winged his warlike way up, up and out of the eyepiece, So when No.1 Wife looks in, she sees the black canvas of space, with maybe one or two titchy little stars in the background. She didn’t hit me, physically, but the twitching of her eyebrow told all. I imagine her whispering into my sleeping ear tonight, something along the lines of; “If you EVER drag me out into the frost to look at a stupid star again, I’m gonna put cod liver oil in your hip flask!”.
Sensing defeat, I moved on to No.1 Son. Far more gullible, and easily bought, I was more confident with this one. Not in the least because I had re-found Mars, and altered the focus slightly to make it appear much larger and rounder than normal. But No.1 Son grabs the binos, points them up, and goes “Hey dad, Isn’t that the great nebula in Andromeda?!”, so at present it is 1-0 to him.
But it all hinges on the next half an hour. Orion is making his mighty ascent. Soon the M42 nebula will be out of the light pollution caused by the streetlights along the M42 motorway. Will Orion’s nebula through the £14.99er be the catalyst and catapult to launch our stargazing career??? Watch this space….
