I have chanced across a monty python sketch that
seems strangly familliar. Perhaps it fell
through a wormhole from an alternate
universe.
Resemblences to persons or telescopes living or
dead is purely coincidental. Names of the
perpetrator has been changed to protect
the guilty.
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The Four Observers
Mike: Ahh.. Very passable, this, very passable.
Richard:Nothing like a 18" goto Starmaster, eh?
Roland:You're right there, Ricardo.
Matt: Who'd a thought thirty years ago we'd all be observing with
an binoviewered 18" computer controlled scope in a luxurious
roll-off roof observatory big enough for a whole star party.
Mike: Aye. In them days, we'd a' been glad to have a schmidt
cassegrain.
Richard:A Halley's-comet era Celestron
Matt: Without a tripod.
Roland:OR or a drive.
Mike: 30mm finder, and all.
Matt: We never had a finder. We used to sight along a seam in the
tube.
Richard:The best WE could manage was to sweep at random with 25mm
Kellner.
Roland:But you know, we were happy in those days, though we had
crappy gear.
Mike: Aye. BECAUSE we had crappy gear. My old Dad used to say to me,
"Its not the scope, its the observer."
Matt: 'E was right. I was happier then and I didnt have telrad. We had
this tiny observatory with with greaaaaat big holes in the roof.
Richard:Observatory? You were lucky to have an Observatory! We used to
observe on the porch, all twenty-six of us, no dome slit. Half
the sky was missing and we were all huddled together in one
corner just to see down to 35 degrees!
Roland: You were lucky to have a PORCH! We used to have to climb the
fire escape to the roof.
Mike: Ohhhh we used to DREAM of of fire escapes to the roof! Woulda' been
a Kitt Peak to us!. We used to observe out the bathroom window of
of a downtown apartment. In the winter, the escaping warm air would
cause airy disks to bloat to 20 arcseconds. Observatory. Hmph.
Matt: Well when I say "Observatory" it was only a garden shed with the
door
open, but it was an observatory to US.
Richard:We were evicted from our garden shed; we had to go and observe
in a sodium-vapor lit hocky rink.
Roland:You were lucky to have a RINK! There were a hundred and fifty
of us observing in a cardboard box in the middle of the
417.
Mike: Cardboard box?
Roland:Aye.
Mike: You were lucky. We observed for thee months in the nude
in a swamp. We used to have to setup at six in the morning,
hack down the bullrushes, drain the swamp, sink the tripods
four feet into the muck, collimate for 14 hours, just for
a couple of hours of observing. And when we got home our
SO would complain about how much we spent on telescopes.
Richard:Luxury! We used to have to set up in the swamp at six in the
morning, drain the swamp, cut down trees,
scrape mosquitos off of our optical
surfaces, sink the tripods 6 feet into the muck, collimate
for 16 hours. And we we got home, our wives would sell
our telescopes, if we were LUKCY!
Roland:Well of course, we had it tough. We used to have to get
set up the previous night, drain the swamp by bailing with
our OTAs, re-aluminize our mirrors, and
collimate 32 different optical surfaces for 20 hours.
And when we got home our SO would accuse us of having
sexual relations with a paracorr and divorce us.
Matt: Right ... I had to walk to the swamp, which was uphill
both ways, carrying 300 pounds of gear,
set up at ten at night, half an hour before I packed up,
sop up the swamp with my only copy of Uranometria, pay
for parking!, melt sand into glass, sift more sand
into abrasives, chew pine trees to make pitch, grind
12 mirrors, collimate for 36 hours, observe with a
1mm eyerelief tasco eyepiece for 3 minutes under
a limiting magnitude of -26 in heavy snow showers,
and when we got home our SO would spit on our
Naglers and run off the editor of Sky&Tel.
Mike: And you try and tell the young observers today that...
and they won't believe ya'.
All: They won't..
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