Telescope Depression

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you observe, and what you enjoy observing.  Beginners just do not have all this knowledge yet.  The equation for a good telescope is so personal and specific that advice from others is valuable, but always incomplete.  Of course, you can't tell a beginner who just got the astronomy bug sufficiently to go out and spend $500-$1000 of his or her hard-earned money on a telescope that you can't help.  I wouldn't have listened to such sage advice anyway -- and I didn't! 

The guy in the Lumicon show room tried to tell me that the whole idea of a Dobsonian was to look at and learn the sky without a lot of expensive or fancy accessories.  Did I listen? No. I was making my telescope better!  My telescope was going to be the best it could be.  I was going to get the maximum out of my 8-inch that anyone every got out of an 8-inch.

One dark night two years ago, I was alone at H₂0.  I had upgraded to a 12.5-inch f/3.5 telescope.  I had made 2,500 accurately recorded observations for the American Association of Variable Star Observers.  As I stood resting after a series of grueling star hops to some faint variables, I suddenly thought to myself "I don't feel the same way about my telescope anymore."  At first I was scared, then I realized that I was enjoying my observing with this telescope.  This wasn't a bad feeling or awareness.  It was just the realization that things have changed.  I asked myself why.

I had used my telescope so much that it had lost the special status it had in my fantasies and dreams.  It was an astronomical instrument.  The telescope was no longer central to my observing.  What I was observing was more important than the telescope.  I had graduated from learning, mastering, and enjoying the telescope to an observing program with observing goals.  The telescope I used did not matter as much anymore.

As the New York Daily News asked the morning after Neil Armstrong stepped on the Moon, "So what?"  Now I can look back on my first telescopes and look at what they meant to me.  I can compare what I thought and felt about them with what I think and feel now.  The difference seems significant to me.  At the time I thought I was trying to get the best views of deep sky objects.  In retrospect, I was learning amateur astron

omy.  So question for this article is, "What kind of telescope do you need to learn amateur astronomy?"  Let's answer the usual questions potential buyers often pose.

Should I get a refractor, a reflector, or a catadioptric?  To become an accomplished amateur astronomer, you must understand the differences and observe through all three kinds of telescopes.  The particular optical design you start with first isn't so important.  The act of discussing the differences in the designs and trying to decide which one to buy is the important point, the learning point.

How big a telescope should I get? You don't need big legs to learn to walk and you don't need a big telescope to learn amateur astronomy.  Bigger is better, but what you are learning is the meaning of the size of the telescope, not just in optical terms, not just in visual terms, but in the tedium of packing and unpacking, in the space it takes up in your home, and in the trade-off of all these factors.  Telescope size, like many limits in life, is learned by breaking the limit and seeing what it feels like.  Asking the question about size is the important point, the learning point.

How much money should I spend on my first telescope?  If the best things in life were free, then you would make your own telescope from scratch.  If you got what you paid for, then you would buy what you need.  The answer to this question is more like choosing a college than anything else.  It costs more to go to an Ivy League university than the state college in the next city, but the difference is more than money.  It is a difference in culture.  It is a difference in curriculum.  It is a difference in lifestyle.  It's the same with telescopes.  Buying a telescope is the important point, the learning point.

Do I need digital setting circles?  To learn a new subject,  do you need a movie projector, a slide projector, a computer, a calculator, or an overhead projector.  Maybe not, they may help you learn, but they may also inhibit your learning.  You be the judge.  When you find objects in a telescope, you are learning where you live.  This is the important point, the learning point.

So, if you judge your new telescope by its ability to teach you amateur astronomy, I think you will have a better perspective of your telescope.  You won't get
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