Sky & Telescope - March 2020 - 6

FROM OUR READERS

I enjoyed "Hobby Killers" (S&T: Dec.
2019, p. 36) and hope that everyone who
put a telescope on their Christmas list
read it! Years ago, cheap refractors were
sold with a special "solar ﬁlter," a dark
glass ﬁlter that screwed into the eyepiece
for observing the Sun. The severe dangers of this are apparent - the ﬁlter can
crack during use - and I wonder how
many children back in the '60s or '70s
had their eyesight permanently damaged
by these. They've long since been discontinued, but if any old ones are lurking
around, do not use them if you value your
eyesight! This would make a hobby killer
even worse: an "eyesight killer"!
Mark Puscas
Salem, Oregon

This piece was fantastic! I had a telescope 40 years ago as a child. Using it
was a frustrating experience. Every possible thing that could go poorly did. After
reading this article, I'm no longer fearful
and jumping back into buying a telescope (a SkyQuest 8-inch Dobsonian).
Thanks for this wonderful introduction!
Elihu Feustel
South Bend, Indiana

Regarding Jerry Oltion's comment on
teeny-weeny eyepieces, speciﬁcally the
0.965-inch eyepieces that were once
offered with most junk scopes, I agree
6

MARCH 2 02 0 * SK Y & TELESCOPE

that most are garbage. But some truly
outstanding ones are out there, such as
Zeiss and Pentax Orthoscopics. I have a
complete set of the latter and consider
these some of the ﬁnest planetary eyepieces ever made.
They are very sharp, with exceptionally low light scatter. These are no longer produced but can be obtained on the
used market if one is patient. There are
not many modern eyepieces that offer
this level of performance.
Vahe Sahakian
Houston, Texas

Something I call the "big lie of amateur
astronomy" relates to Jerry Oltion's
ﬁne article "Hobby Killers." The lie is
that you're going to see stuff through
the scope that looks like the photos
from websites, books, magazines, and
the telescope's box. I've never seen an
ad or article for new folks explaining
that they'll never see all the colors and
details we get in photos when they use
their scope visually and why there is
such a difference. Such an explanation
might reduce the hobby-killer syndrome.
Tim S. Jones
La Crescenta, California

Imagine my surprise when I turned the
page to Jerry Oltion's article, "Revive a
Hobby Killer" (S&T: Dec. 2019, p. 72)

Alan Hirshfeld
University of Massachusetts
North Dartmouth, Massachusetts

I was dismayed to read Jerry Oltion's
recommendation for beginners to avoid
equatorial mounts. Flimsy mounts of
any design aside, equatorial mounts are
excellent at providing beginners a 3D,
hands-on method to learn the motion
of the celestial sphere.
My ﬁrst telescope, a 4¼-inch
Edmund Scientiﬁc Palomar Jr., came
with a German equatorial mount. With
the aid of the included well-illustrated
and clearly written instructions by Sam
Brown, it took me less than 15 minutes
to learn how to operate and track the
telescope with just one movement. The
setup only required that I point the
polar axis due north and set its altitude
for my latitude. I was 10 years old at the
time, and I learned it all on my own.
Howard Lester
Gansevoort, New York

Jerry Oltion replies: While it's true

that an equatorial mount will teach
a person valuable skills if they later go on
into advanced astronomy, my experience
with dozens of newcomers to the ﬁeld is
that the initial learning curve for equatorial

LE AH TISCIONE / S&T

The Best "First" Telescope?

and saw the photo of an Edmund Scientiﬁc 4¼-inch reﬂector, poised purposefully on its gray pedestal mount. Fifty
years ago, my parents drove me to
the Edmund outlet, where I counted
out $84.50 in saved-up coins for the
instrument billed by the company as
the "ideal telescope for quality-minded
beginners." And so it proved to be.
Oltion's photo took me back to those
frigid winter nights observing from the
driveway of our suburban home. I swept
up planets, double stars, and a host of
Messier objects. The Edmund scope was
the steppingstone to my decades-long
professional career in astronomy.
While I've graduated to bigger
instruments, the "Deluxe Space Conqueror" still sits in my ofﬁce, a daily
source of inspiration. The hobby killer
in my case was not the Edmund scope
but the rickety department-store refractor it replaced.

Sky & Telescope - March 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Sky & Telescope - March 2020