UPGRADES AT THE GARDEN OBSERVATORY, 7 JUNE 2007

While members of a small local club were at the Steam Museum looking at a hastily set up older model glow-in-the-dark plastic POD, scratching their heads and wondering how their 6 foot 5 buddy could squeeze through its little doggy-door opening, I was observing at the Garden observatory.

Harvey Garden redesigned his observatory to hold a much larger Schmidt Cassegrain telescope on a permanent pier / wedge assembly in his back yard near Binbrook. We observed a number of objects tonight with a high-end binoviewer that he really liked. Of course, Harvey’s new telescope is an older “go-to” model… meaning he is getting very accurate using its setting circles to find objects. It’s great to have a permanently aligned telescope in a backyard observatory at a dark site, eh, Harvey?

So unlike a few others, I had beautiful views of Venus, Saturn and Jupiter tonight without having to squeeze my head through a small doggy-door into a humid glow-in-the-dark plastic POD at the Steam Museum.