Dave Wallace's Adventures in Astronomy

04/10/2004 0000 UTC

At the ATMoB site again tonight. I thought I would be there by myself (it's a Friday night), but a couple of the regulars (Steve and Steve) showed up. They dragged out the big Dobsonian and went hunting for deep-sky objects. Made me feel inferior with my little 3-1/2" scope -- the one they were using was 24"! But I got a chance to see what a really big "light bucket" can do. Impressive! But no way could I get that monster in my car. Like they say, the best telescope is the one that gets used.

Anyway, when they weren't twisting my arm to come look at the latest faint fuzzy they'd found (thanks, guys -- I really enjoyed it!), I did manage to play around with my little machine. And I bagged another Messier object: M3. It's not as impressive a globular as M13 in my scope, but pretty nice. I also took a gander at M42, M45, Jupiter, Saturn and the double star Almaak. We called it a night around midnight.