Remember Visual Astronomy?

My 12" Meade Lightbridge

Any of you astrophotographers remember...looking...through a scope? Remember...eyepieces?

I had the pleasure of showing the night sky to some folks at a family event up near San Saba, Texas at their very nice dark sky site. I had met them through the Lampasas County Friends of the Night Sky group, who advocate for dark skies and low light pollution. This family has an annual get-together, and asked if I could provide an astro session one evening. I had tried this last year with them, but central Texas succumbed to serious flooding, so we had to cancel. However, this time around we were blessed with nice skies.

Their property was way beyond anywhere! The Milky Way looked excellent, and there was very little light pollution around. Satellites were extremely bright, and it was so very peaceful and quiet. Anyway, during the session I explained how the telescope works and pointed out the major constellations, stars and planets. Using the telescope, showed them a few interesting objects including Venus, M13, M57 and Albireo. They seemed to really enjoy it. Many of them commented that M13 looked like a smattering of salt across the dark sky!

But, taking some time to enjoy space objects visually was really a nice reminder to do it once in a while. Getting nice images is great, and working with the current technology makes it fun and easy, for the most part. But there's still nothing quite like letting those light photons from far, far away hitting your retina.

My trusty eyepiece set.