@W6KME @ai6yr

i think any hardware/toys you can geek about count. i follow folks talking about musical instruments, fiber crafts, jewelry, woodworking, calligraphy/fountain pens. you just have to be well beyond sanely interested in whatever it is and overly willing to share technical details. ;)

@paul_ipv6 @W6KME @ai6yr Hardware/toy geekery pairs nicely with "Something something astronomy".

Current bit of precision-ground glass in a tube: 12.5"/320mm f/5 Dobsonian reflector on a cart for easy transport. It breaks down into smaller components so it's possible to take it on a road trip to darker skies.

@jkanev @paul_ipv6 @W6KME @ai6yr

I didn’t make it myself. I bought it from someone who was a woodworker who’d also gotten into amateur telescope making. No good photos of it though in the disassembled state, unfortunately.

If there is a lot of light pollution, the larger mirror does help: it won’t fish really diffuse faint objects like galaxies out of the murk, but it does make it easier to see fainter stars and clusters of stars. Larger optics also translate into higher optical resolution, so you can see finer details in bright objects like the moon and planets.

@jkanev @paul_ipv6 @W6KME @ai6yr

I have, from a very dark sky with a 10” scope some years back. With a 6” it should be possible to see all the Messier catalog galaxies, but you’ll need a dark sky to have a reasonable chance at it.

Galaxies are, without a doubt, *the* toughest things to see with significant light pollution. You can snag fairly faint stars by cranking up the magnification a bit, and many nebulas can be made more visible with narrowband color filters, but galaxies are only visible when the sky background light level is low enough.

@jkanev @paul_ipv6 @W6KME @ai6yr

For context, Mr. Messier observed many of the 110 objects in the Messier catalog with a 4”/100 mm refractor. This is a reasonable starting point for seeing them distinctly under a completely dark sky, which he (and pretty much everyone else in the 18th century) had. Keep in mind that in many cases, what he saw was “faint fuzzy blob that looks kind of like a comet”. Seeing details in galaxies (in particular) requires a larger scope along with genuinely dark skies.