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by David J. Sworin
Amateur astronomers can be very attached to their telescopes. I was very attached to my first telescope. I swore I'd never sell it. I kept it right in the middle of my living room, a prerogative of my bachelor lifestyle. I bought more than $1,000 worth of accessories and equipment to go with my $350 telescope. Luckily, I still use some of these accessories, even though the telescope is long gone. Somewhere on the way to becoming an experienced amateur astronomer, I let go of my attachment to that telescope and to the other telescopes I own. I still value my telescopes. I still use the ones I have. I still dream of new and better mouse traps with shorter or longer focal ratios. So what's the difference between then and now? What's wrong with being attached to your new telescope? It's not wrong, it just causes telescope depression.
You can recognize telescope depression by its feelings, thoughts, and actions: You feel bad about your telescope; you wonder why you go observing anymore with that telescope; you haven't really used the telescope you just got, but you want another one; or you think about quitting observing. Telescope depression may start when you look through someone else's telescope and the view is better than the view in your telescope. Or it starts when you have a bad observing experience with dew or get frustrated trying to find objects. Or perhaps a fellow observer makes a critical comment about your telescope after looking through it. Or maybe a nearby observer impolitely brags about his scope and annoyingly shows off his astronomical knowledge while you struggle to find objects and your telescope mistakenly takes the blame. New observers are very susceptible to telescope depression because so many of the early experiences in amateur astronomy are frustrating: not being able to see, feeling cold, failing, being lost, being confused, and being alone. I have experienced all this and more. These experiences shouldn't lead to telescope depression, but sometimes they do.
I recently returned from a Tri-Valley Stargazers open house at Hidden Hills Observatory. I saw lots of wonderful new telescopes. It reminded me of when I started astronomy. I felt six years younger. I miss the first nights out with my first scope. I remembered my first trip to H20. Then I started to worry. I was show
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ing these people some of the wonders of the universe in my 18-inch f/4.5 Obsession that just happened to have the honor of being the largest scope present that evening. I remember nights during my first two years of observing at H20, when I would refuse any invitation to look through the club scope. I avoided hanging around the observatory building for fear someone would ask me to look through the club telescope. Every time I looked in that telescope I felt bad about my own 8-inch f/4.5 Coulter Odyssey, a very cheaply made Dobsonian telescope. Instead of helping these new observers with their new telescopes, would I make them feel bad about their instruments? I hoped not, but I wasn't sure.
Every observer sees something different
I have found observing with a telescope to be a very personal experience that is difficult to share with others. For example, when I look at a faint galaxy I sometimes wonder whether the photons of light that strike my eye and enter my body first bounced off the back of a strange-looking dinosaur in another world on a planet orbiting around a star in that galaxy. In such a case, do the inside-of-focus and outside-of-focus star images in my telescope really matter? Show that galaxy to someone, and that's just the kind of comment you're likely to get. Our telescopes and our dreams are sometimes wrapped up in the same package. Getting your dreams walked on by unsuspecting fellow observers is not much fun, despite their good intentions. We also walk on people's dreams and feelings without ever knowing it. These tragedies may be an unavoidable part of life, but let's not make life any worse.
Observers with new telescopes can protect themselves with what I consider to be a more realistic perspective. Does this perspective conflict with their fantasies and dreams? I don't know. I will, however, try to explain how my view of telescopes changed after I had observed for about five years, and I'll let you decide.
Aside from avoiding obviously poor telescopes, researching what kind of telescope to purchase as your first instrument is difficult and rarely fruitful. Even experienced observers have a difficult time judging equipment they have never used before; and good observational results depend on where you observe, what
(Continued on Page 8)
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