Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Yep. The 1962 movie was OK. I didn't even know it was a book until these comments came in.
Thanks

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Already there on some nights I just took a bunch of subs of M27.

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Hi SPEIGHT
Thanks for comment and checking out the image.

topcat Loc: Alameda, CA

Nice work

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Thanks topcat

JimH123 Loc: Morgan Hill, CA

Not only outside your (or my) budget, but the line is long of those who can use it!

It was either Sky & Telescope or was it Astronomy magazine that wrote up a trip that a telescope club rented out the old Mt. Wilson observatory for a night and described their adventure. Maybe not as good as using Hubble, but a whole lot better than what I have! The Mt. Wilson scope is retired from use by professional astronomers now, but it still fully functional. And they reported on how superb the optics were.

By the way, I have looked thru an eyepiece on the famous Lick Telescope near San Jose, and also a 40 inch reflector that they had nearby. Both times, the target was a globular star cluster. And my thoughts about using an eyepiece with a big scope, or my camera with my much smaller scope, was that I enjoyed the camera view the best since it captured light for a longer period of time than my eye was doing in the eyepiece. Of course, astronomers no longer visually study their targets with eyepieces. That's so 1800's!

I spoke with the technician about why they don't just put the image up an a screen for everyone to see. His response was that the public just wants the opportunity to look thru an eyepiece! They have no concept of what a short exposure time will do to enhance the image.

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Hi Jim
I remember reading that article about the folks using the 60 inch scope at Mount Wilson (I think it was in Sky and Telescope ). As I recall they used the scope at the Cassegrain focus for public viewing since the Newtonian focal point would be to dangerous being so high off the ground. Although stars would be brighter, extended objects would be much bigger but not brighter than we see through our scopes. In fact to get all the light into a fully dilated pupil the minimum magnification you could use would be ~250x.
I expect the looking though those really large scopes doesn't always meet public expectations. However a globular cluster with lots of stars would still be very impressive.