OK Southern-stargazers, it seems to be working here again...

I think You're very lucky with Your clear-skies overthere. It's worth the roll-out the best in telescopes and is also a good excuse to obtain the best (also most expensive...)

In 1980 I was captured by the star-virus but being a scool-boy then with only monthly pocketmoney, made me build my first telescoope. With a borrowed (I still have it, shame on me!) "D-I-Y" book I "scraped" a 100mm mirror, combined it with an old prisma from a broken binoculair and a scratched old 7mm oculair, all together fixed in a piece of drain-pipe. Due to over-enthousiasme focal lenght was 400mm only. Nevertheless it worked fine but gave only small enlargements.

Starting to work provided me with a better monthly income, so in 1985 a 60mm/700mm azimuth refractor on wooden tri-pod was obtained from a local camera-shop, where it was standing on display to attrack some attention. So it did!

I saw Halley's comet with it in 1986 and lots of moon. But still it wasn.t IT.

Than it came by: a black-and-red printed poster of Polarex. Gasp! This had to be the follow-up. I got me a 102mm/F1500mm with guidescope on pier with electrical drive, just affordable and "portable" for one person: for every observation the complete set-up had to be assembled, due to the small back-yard where I used to live then(still am). Razor sharp pictures, steady as a rock the polarex. I was living in a rural place near Gouda (look it up...) with dark skies then. Now 20 years later the city has "exploded" caus now I'm nearly living in the centre of it without moving at all! NO dark skies anymore, lots of green-housers being build around me with yellow-light beaming up day and night, neighbours peeking from behind their curtains cause they don't trusted what I was really looking at, and finally more rain and clouds each year than 20 yaers ago (climate change)

The small 60mm stays in its box for years now, the 102mm polarex is now a piece of furniture, as it is standing in the sitting-room...

Last time it went out was during the 1999 solar-eclipse when I took it to a location in North-France. Together with some solar-screen, a plain video-camera and a photo-camera, I guessed it would deliver me at least 1 good picture, good-old polarex never failed me and I could leave with a VHS-recording and lots of pictures of the eclipse.

Since 1999 the polarex has never been outside again here in Holland, its not worth it anymore.

But I'm not the only one, working here at the Delft University for some years now, every morning I pass-by the long-empty dome of what used to be the universities observatorium. Now it's a storage place for empty bottles....A sad sight! Concerning the marks on the floor I think a 6"polarex ever stood here. Pity!

Thats why I envy you so much with clear-skies, much less light-pollution and no nights as cold your hands freeze to the metal parts of the scope...

Anyone already having some nice view on Mars overthere?

regards,

alex.

 PS: I'm having trouble uploading some pictures, media-gallery keeps on blinking...