Spend the money on the optics! That’s what I decided was the most important thing to keep in mind in 2002 when I purchased my first scope. It is now 23 years later and nothing has changed. This resulted is my first telescope being an 8″ Discovery Dobsonian telescope. I have enjoyed many hours of amazing views with the 8″ dob. If you are considering purchasing a first scope, I strongly suggest the Dobsonian design and the Discovery brand. I have to admit that after Continue reading →{"id":155,"date":"2014-05-29T19:33:15","date_gmt":"2014-05-29T19:33:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/casazza.net\/Home\/?page_id=155"},"modified":"2025-01-01T19:32:23","modified_gmt":"2025-01-02T00:32:23","slug":"astro-my-approach","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/casazza.net\/Home\/index.php\/astro-my-approach","title":{"rendered":"My approach to visual astronomy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Spend the money on the optics!\u00a0<\/strong> $\"Discovery\"$ That’s what I decided was the most important thing to keep in mind in 2002 when I purchased my first scope. It is now 23 years later and nothing has changed. \u00a0This resulted is my first telescope being an 8″ Discovery Dobsonian telescope. I have enjoyed many hours of amazing views with the 8″ dob. If you are considering purchasing a first scope, I strongly suggest the Dobsonian design and the Discovery brand.<\/p>\n

I have to admit that after a few short years I caught my first case of aperture fever and I got an 11″ GOTO scope with GPS to boot! It is a very nice scope, but if I was a beginner, it would be too much. If you have the budget I suggest the 8″ Celestron SCT scope as a very good choice for a second scope. Very easy to use, assuming you already know the sky, plus quick and easy to set up and tear down.<\/p>\n

My original equipment consisted of an 8″ dobsoniaon reflector, 6 very inexpensive 1.25″ eyepieces, 2X barlow, a few filters, redlights, and a laptop. I recently purchased a webcam, but found that the moon was about all I could image with a dobsionain mount. When I got the NexStar 11″, I sold the 8″ dob, but kept everything else. I also acquired several inexpensive wide field eyepieces from Owl Services. \u00a0Years later I tried an Explore Scientific 82 degree 18mm eyepiece and picked up a used Nagler Type 2 12mm. \u00a0With a long focal length scope I still find the inexpensive eyepieces to preform as well or even better that the higher end products. $\"Eye$ <\/p>\n

I started out doing most of my observing from my back deck. The surrounding buildings often have lights on and the sky glow is pretty bad, on a good night I can just make out the Triangulum Galaxy M33. I am fortunate to belong to the Greater Hazleton Astronomy Society and have access to a relatively close site that has much darker skies and several amenities that make observing comfortable. \u00a0Several years ago I ventured out to Cherry Springs State Park and now I really don’t do much astronomy other than there due to it’s incredible darkness.<\/p>\n

When I started observing I experienced the common newbie frustration of not being able to find anything that I couldn’t see through bin $\"AzimuthBig\"$ oculars. I lacked the charts and the skills to star hop. It sounds so easy until you look in a scope and see 20 stars in the field. It also didn’t help that I got a slower scope, which resulted is a narrower field of view. My solution was to rig up altitude and azimuth indicators to the scope and let some software guide me. That worked, but I found the software I have required too much user interaction and the laptop screen would hurt my night vision even with a red filter. So I wrote AstroHelper. This program let me plan my observation session and then just walk up to the screen and in a glace get the current coordinates of the next object.<\/p>\n

The first 2 years of amateur astronomy cost me just under $1,000, but lots of time. After developing Astro Helper<\/a>, I started developing the Clear Sky Alarm Clock<\/a>. The alarm clock is based on the Clear Sky Clock which is driven by astronomy forecasts made by the Canadian Meteorological Centre. \u00a0I also built Tonight’s Sky<\/a>, a site to help people plan their evening observing and I am now working on a similar project for astro imagers.<\/p>\n

I’ve continued to “spend the money on the optics” and to that end my primary visual scope is now a 20″ Star Master truss tub dobsonian telescope. Due to the scope’s fast focal ration of f\/4.5 I did need to upgrade my eyepieces and I use 4 Tele Vue eyepieces and a Seibert Optics 1.5X barlow to fill in that gaps between focal lengths.<\/p>\n