Story about your first scope

[njjmfm]

Hey everyone,
What was your first telescope? Is there a story behind it? What was the first object you ever saw?

I'm still working on my first scope after at least 7 or 8 years. My parents gave it to me one year for my birthday but I never truly used it until two or three years back. I think my first light object was the Sun and then the moon a few years back
Anyway clear skies,
Joe

[EJMaine]

Hello again, Joe!

I am still using my first scope as I just got it 3 years ago. It is a 6 inch Newtonian reflector on a GEM, from Orion. My first sight: Jupiter!
The story of the scope is slightly symbolic for me. I had always loved the night sky as a younger man, but never took learning about it seriously. Then one night three years ago, after I came home from work around 9 PM, I looked up and was amazed at how many stars I could see. We had just moved to our new home. I had previously lived in more lit up neighborhoods, and had a rough first marriage. I believe I was "looking down" too much. But my second marriage has been great, with a loving supportive spouse, who didn't mock or scoff at me when I came inside that night, like an excited child, babbling about seeing the Milky Way. She instead suggested getting a modest telescope and start exploring both the heavens and the hobby. I am now thoroughly enthralled by the night sky and planning an upgrade in a year or two.

[sxinias]

I still have and use my first telescope I purchased over 25+ years ago. It is a Meade 2045LX3 (4inch SCT) that Meade advertised at the time as a portable observatory. I agonized trying to decide between the 4 inch Meade SCT and a 6 inch Bausch and Lomb Crittington (sp) SCT. The larger 6 inch B&L SCT came with a tripod and wedge while the smaller Meade 4 inch SCT came with a table top mount (azimuth and equatorial). The price was the same for either telescope. At the time, the Meade LX3 drive was the CAT's meow for telescope drives and with the addition of an optional dec motor and hand controller was state of the art for photography. I got the smaller telescope because of its portability as I frequently flew from California to Greece and wanted to take my telescope with me and because the quartz drive appealed to the tech geek in me. The Meade 2045LX3 is the perfect carry-on telescope and easily fits underneath the seat in front of me. It truly is a portable observatory.

The Meade 2045LX3 was my only scope for around 23 years before I finally got aperture fever and went bigger but not necessarily better. Although I seldom use the little CAT for visual work any more, it is still in service. Today, my Meade 2045LX3 is mounted on a Celestron 4SE mount with a wedge and is used as a camera scope for astrophotography which is my prime interest in astronomy at the moment.

[KeithBC]

My first scope was ugly in all respects! It was a 2" Charles Frank refractor. While Frank made some decent scopes, this wasn't one of them.

It had a cardboard tube and used a 1 diopter (1000mm fl) eyeglass lens as the objective. I don't remember anything about the eyepiece except that it was a single element lens moulded into a rubber housing that was bunged into a plastic draw tube. I vaguely recall that the magnification might have been 20x, so that would have made the EP focal length 50mm.

If the scope sounds bad, the mount was worse. The tripod legs were 3/8" steel rods, braced (and I use the word loosely - pun intended), by flat metal bars, all hinged with rivets. The azimuth movement was a metal cylinder in a cup. This supported a single springy steel bar (about 1/2" x 1/8", and maybe 6" tall) on which a single rivet fomed the altitude axis. It must have been a sexy mount, because it would shimmy seductively if you so much as looked at it!

What did I see with it? SFA, pardon the expression. Living in a 4th floor apartment, my only observing option was looking through the 100 year old glass of my bedroom window. I think I did once point it at Jupiter and see light in the eyepiece.

The scope was a Christmas present from my parents when I was about 7 or 8. In spite of the horror story, it didn't quell my interest in astronomy!

[sportsmed]

Well I got my first scope only about 3 months ago which is my Zhumell 114mm. My friend had a 114mm Celestron and took me out one night to show me Saturn. That got me hooked and reminded me of when I was a kid looking through a couple of scopes and how I enjoyed it. So That week I bought the little Zhumell and started in this hobby. But soon I got Aperture fever and went for the Zhumell z10 that I mainly use now. Even though this can be an expensive hobby I'm glad I got into it, not only is it fun, but has help keep my mind of some of the stuff I have been going through for awhile.

[Bobble]

I saved my scope from a dumpster after I had seen it tossed in .
I loaded it into my van and brought him home with me. After I got there I saw that it had been sitting around for quite a while by the thick layer of dust on the mirror and went on line to figure out the best way to fix'er up.
Well did that and bought a cheshire collimator. a Hyperion 21mm and a telrad (there was no finder and a K10mmEP).
I downloaded Stellarium and my first light was the Pleiades star cluster followed by the Orion Nebula. I am now hooked for what is left of my time on this earth.
I was planning on a hobby and was about to take flying lessons but the stars (among other celestial objects) got in my way
And you'll never hear a complaint from me ...ever

Regards
Bob

[LEDHead]

My first scope, 12 or 15 years ago was a Meade 60mm refractor on eq mount. I bought it new, ordered over the phone but it was really just a typical department store type scope. First target in it was Saturn. I was amazed at it's beauty and majesty. I did manage to find M31 and of course the Moon with it. I didn't really have any tools, atlases, good eyepieces or other resources and I quickly bored of the scope and its limited optics. I preferred binocular viewing more than using that scope. I left it sitting outside on the deck until the weather had taken too much of a toll on it and finally threw it away. Now, armed with more knowledge, more investment, more passion and better equipment, sky gazing has become a much bigger part of my life in the past several years.

[warmvet]

My first scope, an 8" Dob, I purchased for my spouse 12+ years ago. I did a lot of research before the purchase and shipping killed me to Hawaii. After we enjoyed it a bit & saw the most obvious objects we didn't really know what else to look at, duh. So it went into a closet until I took an astronomy class at the local college 3 years ago. I will be forever thankful to the person teaching it. She was just so full of excitement & wonder I couldn't Help but be excited again, so I got some books, checked out the Internet, joined this forum...and here I am today!

Sometimes the best present you can get for someone else is one you would like to have yourself. That is unless you take it back!

[hal2000]

Mine was also a 2" refractor, actually an ex-army spotting scope, sometime around 1977-78. It was mounted on an extremely rickety old camera tripod. First sight through it was Saturn, and I've never forgotten the excitement of that moment. I've still got it, and have a bit of Baader film over the front of it to look at the Sun.

[fmhill]

I'm surprised to see a number of first scopes being 2" aperture and one 60mm (slightly over 2"), I figured my first scope, also a 2" (50mm) was hardly worth mentioning.

I was in the USAF, stationed in the Alaska Aleutian Islands in the mid 1960's and I had binoculars, a couple of star atlases, and a subscription to Sky & Telescope. The night skies were truly spectacular and I succumbed and purchased via mail order from some advertiser of Astronomy Gear in SKy & Telescope, an inexpensive Criterion 50mm x 500mm refractor for a little less than $100... It came with a 6.4mm, 15/16 dia. barrel eyepiece and I used a camera tripod I had with me for a mount... It was strictly for observing and as a finder scope for an 8x10 glass plate camera I'd built out of a 36" f6.3 surplus aerial camera lens and some 3/4' plywood. My big interest at that time was capturing satellite trails as they streaked past the stars. I stiill have the Criterion scope although now in tough shape after being shipped all over the world and surviving my kids as they became interested...