Thanks, Kurt, I had a feeling it was something like that. My problem isn't lack of equipment, but lack of time and zero interest on the part of the rest of the family. "Telescope night" just isn't an option for family recreational time. I'm just at a phase of my life where hobbies have to take a back seat. Even what little on-line time I have is taken up with email almost exclusively- I don't "surf" and only rarely look at Websites, even the ones posted here unfortunately. And even then there sometimes isn't time for that- I had to click the "no mail" list option for a month and a half recently due to workload and family responsibilities. Weeknight meetings are almost impossible for me to attend unless I'm on vacation and it's not a school night for the kid. But things are slowly changing and coming years will see more free time as my daughter gets older. I figure once she gets a driver's license, I'll only see her when she needs money, so I might get a major portion of my time back! ;) I'm still trying to get the heavy-duty parallelogram finished- that's only a 40 or 50 hour project, but I've had almost zero workshop time for weeks now. After that, I have about decided to bypass the 12.5" scope that I have optics for, and go straight to the 17.5" (had the optics since 1987) with a no-frills visual scope approach, just to be able to look through the darn thing. A myriad of other half-completed projects could conceivably keep me busy for years- and I hope they do one day! I really am passionate about this hobby, as I approach my 40th year of amateur astronomy (2008!), and hope to be much more involved again, one of these days. --- Canopus56 <canopus56@yahoo.com> wrote:
My impression is that there are two types of star parties now.
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