Telescope Inventory Hits 40: Including Spectacular New Binoculars
/Our Recent Acquisitions
Our new Oberwerk 105 mm Binoculars, with a pair of Orion 20x80's on top, to compare sizes.
Our Telescope Library has had a great deal of traffic this year, and it is not over yet. Our peak season is summer, naturally, and activity is up over last year. Please note that we already have telescope reservations that go on into the winter, and we serve the membership year round. Recently, we reached something of a milestone: 40 telescope or binocular packages are now available for reservation via the website. The library may continue to grew slightly, but 40 is a good target. As new telescopes are introduced, we will be examining our collection much more critically, and retiring older instruments. Changes now will be toward newer gear, and more diversity.
There are two ways we have increased the number of packages we can offer. One is that we have been acquiring new gear via donation. Between a third and half of all our equipment has been donated in the last 18 to 24 months. Some items that have been here for a while have been unused because they were incomplete. There were missing finder scopes, visual backs, diagonal eyepiece holders, and few people want to borrow an incomplete package, these telescopes or often unusable. By organizing our spare parts collection, many of the "lost" items could once again be matched up, forming packages again. This has helped us to the number 40, even as we retired several older scopes.
What's next? We have a bit of catching up to do, and this winter is a good chance to do it. We are short of storage space, so we are trying to make the best use of what we have. We will deeply at least one collapsible telescope at OMSI, replacing a bulky old Dobsonian. If borrowers tell us that's a good instrument, we may do more of that. We'll have more binoculars at OMSI as well, they pack a lot of observing ability into a small size, and you can expect to see more Refractors, in the 4 to 6 inch class. Again, the emphasis will be on portability and compactness. We will maximize the efficiency of the space we have, and give you more choices.
The Oberwerks ready to spot aircraft, and later, Jupiter!
Outrageous Binocular!
The binoculars in the roller case.
Until recently, we've offered 4 pars of binoculars at OMSI. Now a 5th pair joins the collection, and this one is special. Lots of people have borrowed binoculars without a tripod, and we try to make sure they have one, since you need them for anything over about 12 power.
With these new binoculars, the tripod and mount are part of the package. We are not giving you a choice, because of the size and weight. These binoculars have 4 inch objectives, and it weighs 28 pounds. It has 4 sets of paired eyepieces, and loans out with its own roller case. Each optical system focuses independently, which takes a bit longer, but compensates for differences in vision from one eye to the other. It also has its own finder scope.
These are not the binoculars you grew up with, be prepared for something quite different. Planets and open clusters really come at you with these; you can see a surprising amount of detail detail. With the light gathering ability of a 6" Newtonian, you get great binocular views of the moon, planets, and many open clusters, nebula, and star fields. This is an easy to use instrument, despite its size.
This is just one of our new acquisitions, next month, we'll spotlight another.
President’s Paragraph, February 2019
Wildfires have been increasingly figuring into our planning for our summer observing. If you plan to get outdoors to observe under our great Pacific Northwest skies this season, please read these preparedness suggestions:
We need to stop thinking of wildfires as abnormal and start planning our summer observing as if we could very well encounter wildfires, or have skies filled with smoke, or have to cancel events for fires.
We have to watch the fire forecast as carefully as we watch the weather forecast. I’ve asked Matt Vartanian, our new VP of Observing, to include fire watch in his forecasts for star parties, even early in the season, just to get in the habit of it.
We have to create safety practices at star parties in preparation for the event of a fire. At Camp Hancock, we park our vehicles facing the exit so we can get out quickly in case of fire. RCA should make this a requirement also. It has the added benefit of turning each car’s headlights away from the observing field.
At Oregon Star Party, we are required to carry five gallons of water dedicated to fire-fighting, and a shovel. We’ve been asked by Eugene Walters, who owns the property at our Maupin site, to require every attendee to have a five-gallon empty plastic buck filled with old blue jeans and enough water to keep them damp, with a lid so they don’t spill in the backs of our cars. In the event of fire, we would put the damp clothes on the grass around our observing site to dampen down the spread of fire, and leave. Eugene said the old-fashioned technique was to use wet gunny sacks. But no one knows what gunny sacks are anymore. I have already assured Eugene we can do this. It’s a small ask to protect his property and to protect ourselves.
We probably will have to develop ways to keep an eye on the wildfire situation on any weekend we’re observing in Oregon Outback. This means that those who have internet connections on site may have to have a fire watch program running in the background.
We must practice fire safety in the drylands where we camp. This means no smoking and no campfires where fire danger is high. This is not one of those “oh well, everyone’s getting too fussy” requirements. If we’re asked not to smoke outdoors, we don’t.
There may come a day when we really do need to leave a place quickly to get to safety. It may even mean having to leave all our beautiful, dearly beloved and expensive equipment behind. But the fires have become more numerous, bigger and faster than they have ever been in the past, and until we as a society invest the time and effort to restore our forest and grassland environments, fires will probably continue on this growth curve.
I sincerely hope that if we are careful and proactive, we can continue to have many more years of wonderful observing. But given that wildfire season has stretched into early spring and late fall, we may have to start expanding our thinking to include our hobby as a winter-time sport. So those clear cold nights in February up at Stub Stewart State Park are looking better all the time. So are nights in our backyards, or online telescope services. We will find a way.
Looking forward — Margaret