While the telescopes are occupied or you are waiting for the exposure series to finish, you don’t have to fall prey to boredom. There are many interesting sidelines in the observatory. One of my personal favorites is our large Dobsonian telescope. A Dobson is characterized by the very simple mount and in our case also by the non-existing computerization. You can just carry it out with two people, manually point it at an object and look through the eyepiece without the need for cabling, calibration, or adjustment. Of course, with the naked eye you don’t see the many colorful details as known from the familiar images on television (or internet). This is mainly due to the fact that we can only perceive the often infrared light only to a very limited extent, but mainly because we as humans are not capable of long exposures with our eyes. Nevertheless, I am amazed every time anew, it is simply a completely different feeling to see the extraterrestrial objects not only on a computer screen.
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