After a month of trying to attend public events held by the local astronomy club, the Naperville Astronomical Association, only to have them clouded or rained out, last night I finally got to do some "serious" stargazing with them. The weather gave it a good shot to shut us down, but after a slow moving rain cloud passed over at 8:30 we finally got clear skies!

And boy howdy, they've got quite the setup at their observatories. In their dome observatory they've got a nice 10" Newt that is a bit of a Frankenstien. For instance, the counterweights are made of old brake drums from a truck! I got my first view of a double-star through that scope.

The crown jewel is their other observatory, which is a custom built 12.5" Newt, which, alone isn't much worth writing home about, except they've converted it solely for video viewing. The signal is piped to multiple TVs in both observatories, so many people can view at once. When they fired that thing up I couldn't believe my eyes. They were pulling up galaxies left-and-right that filled the whole TV screen. M51 (Whirlpool galaxy) looked like it was right out of the books, dust detail and all. This system cuts through the worst of the light pollution that plagues the area.

When my jaw wasn't dropped to the floor, I was able to talk to some guys who really know their stuff about my current itch to buy my own "real" telescope. One of the members actually grinds mirrors himself, he created the 12.5" for the observatory and supposedly is working on a 24".

Through talking with some of the guys, I'm starting to come to the conclusion that I'm going to buy Orion's 8" XT Classic Dobsonian. I originally was looking at EQ mounted scopes, Newts and Mak-Cass, and I still havent 100% made up my mind, but a Dob is starting to seem like the sensible choice for backyard viewing in my situation. If I ever want to do more serious observing, I can just look forward to another event with the astronomy club! And hey, just this morning I went online to find that Orion dropped the price of their 8" Dob down $70, so what more of a sign do I need?!