Ever Do Dumb Stuff While Observing?

[Jazza11]

Two nights ago i was looking at the moon and getting a few pics through the EP and it was fairly close to my house roof and as i was looking at the moon i noticed the top part was black i thought something was wrong with the scope i grabbed a torch looking to see if anything had landed on the mirror i was pretty scared actually lol but i then realised 10 minutes later it was the roof of my house LOL

[rsipin]

Last summer, I packed up my gear into our camper, and headed to a favorite state park 160 miles south of town. Lathrop SP near Walsenburg CO. Far enough south I thought to perhaps see NGC5139 - Omega Centauri. Sure enough, got out the spare spotting scope to see that it was indeed a spectacular bulge of stars about 10 degrees over the clear horizon. Then I went to assemble my gear, only to realize that I forgot the Dobsonian base back home in the garage. Needless to say, a ground and lap-mounted 10" dob isn't the most stable, but I was able to catch a decent glimpse at about 48X. I'll never forgot to check all my gear before I leave the house again!

[RussL]

Last summer, I packed up my gear into our camper, and headed to a favorite state park 160 miles south of town. Lathrop SP near Walsenburg CO. Far enough south I thought to perhaps see NGC5139 - Omega Centauri. Sure enough, got out the spare spotting scope to see that it was indeed a spectacular bulge of stars about 10 degrees over the clear horizon. Then I went to assemble my gear, only to realize that I forgot the Dobsonian base back home in the garage. Needless to say, a ground and lap-mounted 10" dob isn't the most stable, but I was able to catch a decent glimpse at about 48X. I'll never forgot to check all my gear before I leave the house again!

Hot dang, now that's being a trooper there! I've hand-held my ST80 before, when I didn't have a mount yet, but a 10" Dob?!!!! Man alive, I'd love to see a pic of that.

[roverich]

I got a friend of mine back into astronomy ..He had given his father a scope a few years back and had found it again when going through a storage room , Anyway this was an older tasco refractor ..It had a broken diagonal and used .965 EP's ..I hooked him up with a hybrid diagonal so he could at least use a few loaner EP's i also hooked him up with ..He said the views were less than desirable so i told him i could come to his place to show him a few of my scopes . I brought my 8in SCT,5in refractor and an older 114EQ on a small manual mount ..John asked what each scope cost and i told him , He asked about buying the 114EQ .. I sold it to him and he would bring it out most nights it was clear .. Ok , Here is where it gets interesting , John has several viewing areas on his property and he chose to use the grass runway just up the driveway ..After viewing he carefully removed the optical tube from the split rings(don't know why he did this) instead of removing the bolt on the dovetail quick release ..And carefully placed the OTA on the back seat of his late model Chevrolet pickup ..After he had the OTA and eyepieces put away he stood the tripod up in the back of the truck bed and headed back down the driveway to his house , Well he forgot to take the weight off the mount and without a tube on it it was top heavy to say the least ..He hit a bump in the gravel driveway , and the mount took a dive ...The top bed rail took a hit and has a good size dent with paint missing ..The mount hit the ground rings first breaking one ring into 4 pieces and bending the second ring into an oval shape ...The tripod itself had the spreader bar/eyepiece tray mangled and 1 side of it is torn away from the leg itself ..Anyway he has always liked refractors so now he is looking at the celestron line ..

[Jovian]

One time at an observatory I was using a big book of star charts and it was on the ladder next to me, while at the eyepiece i accidentally knocked it off the ladder and the spike of the book came loose.

I've been pretty fortunate so far not to damage my own property, except that i scratched up the eye piece of my finder scope the first night by shining a laser pointer through it. It doesn't seem to affect the view at all but still sucks not having a nice shiny surface after you spent that money.

[ozzmozizz]

i remember the first years i got my scope, i setup in the kitchen, i walked to the living room for 2 mins and i hear this boom. i run to the kitchen and see the tube on the floor. was so lucky was not a hard floor all was a dent and everything was fine. man was i lucky. now am so peranoid when i attach the tub i soo make sure the screw is all the way in. lol

[laney50w]

One night while using my 8" SCT, I found a nice spot outside, set up the scope, tripod, made sure I had all my gear with me....All was good!

I set up the camera & scope for Prime Focus, and other methods like Eyepiece Projection...etc etc...and I started snapping away....2 hours later, AFTER I went back in the house, I realized there was no film in the camera.... DOH!

I was NOT a happy camper.

[Mort1197]

Normally myself being so graceful, would be the one this happens to. My husband is not really into my hobby, but has been out a couple times since I recently purchased my scope. Valentines night, while he was doing his own thing, I went out for a viewing session. His television show went off and he decided to come out with me. He was being hard headed about not allowing his eyes to adjust to the darkness before stepping down from our porch. I asked him to sit on the top step for a few minutes before coming down. No, that wouldn't do. He did fine until the last step. He put one of his feet down on the ground only to find the large hole our boxer had dug earlier that evening. He came crashing down. Not only did he take out the small table I had set up, he ended up dumping me out of the chair. After we made sure he didn't need an ER visit, his comment to me was that this was one valentines under the stars he would never forget. He now sits for a couple minutes before stepping down off the porch.

[Star Rider]

I only do dumb stuff on days that end in "Y".

Clear Skies,
Bob

[Wafer22]

I was out the other evening doing some AP. It was about -8C (18F) and I was starting to get cold so I decided to pack it up and go in for the night. I had been taking pictures towards the east not too far above the horizon so my CGEM was situated such that the optical tube and counterweight were roughly parallel to the horizontal. I powered down the mount, removed the optical tube and put it and all of my equipment in the garage. When I went to move the mount back to the garage, I realized I hadn't lowered the counterweight back to its home position. I grabbed the mount with my right hand in what I thought was a supporting hold and released the RA lock. I actually just had my hand on the base of the mount which allowed the RA portion of the mount along with the counterweight to swing down freely roughly 90 degrees crushing my thumb in the process. That was a week ago last night, my thumb from the last knuckle towards the nail (that amazingly hasn't fallen off...yet) is still a swollen mess. Thank god I had a pair of thin work gloves on, I think it may have saved the end of my thumb. The Doctor was a nice guy though, I think he actually enjoyed burning the hole in my thumbnail with a hot paperclip to release the pressure :~

It was a good lesson, I just started in this hobby this past Dec so am pretty new, nothing like learning something the hard way. The funniest part of it all was explaning what happened at work.

Boyd