I have been wanting to write an essay about this subject for more than ten years, but held off about it because all my friends who were also into amateur astronomy would be deeply offended if they saw it... I had to wait 'til they died first (well, not quite that. But many of them have drifted out of the hobby, burned out, or moved away -- and I won't have to deal with the consequences of this article now.)

As they say, "it takes one to know one." I presume that I must have at least a mild case of the symptoms myself, and one doesn't quite know when it started. Perhaps only o-c people go into amateur astronomy in the first place. After all, what is more impractical than looking up into the sky, rather than attending to important tasks down here on the ground? And sky-watchers are not only impractical, dreamy types; but also they're people who are often quite unsatisfied with this hard, cold, ugly world all about them, down in the dust and dirt and not up in the cold perfection of the 'heavens'.

But the instruments that one uses to examine those heavens above: aye, there's the rub! For the instruments are NEVER good enough; never really in perfect adjustment; never all that we think we need and want.

Before you read on, if you are unfamiliar with "obsessive- compulsive personality disorder" then you need to brush up on the subject. It's different from "OCD" (obsessive- compulsive disorder) which is a pathology of behavior in which people have anxieties that involve recurrent thoughts and repetitive acts. They may, for instance, incessantly wash their hands, or want to go back and forth through a doorway a number of times before they can normally continue on into a room. O-C personality disorder, however, is more common. It runs in families and may be inherited. In addition to perfectionism, the sufferer may be overly concerned with rules, and exhibit a fixed, rigid demand for precisely controlled order; may be so socially isolated and independent that they spurn all assistance from anyone else; may lack empathy for others; and may be extremely self-centered, displaying little generosity. Some are "pack-rats" and hoarders, with houses, cars, and garages full of stuff -- junk that simply can't be thrown away, because "one day it could come in handy."

This is not to say that these people are hopeless, or "mentally ill". Self-awareness is often a first step toward improvement. Medication and cognitive-behavioral therapy are often very useful.

But, all too often the object of compulsion is rationalized in the sufferer as being a laudable self-striving for distinctive achievement. Sooner or later, the "fun" goes out of life, and the person feels driven. They may take themselves and their activities far too seriously, and become extremely sensitive to disagreements in the rigidity of their attitudes, taking great offense if others have a diversity of viewpoints. They seek out only people they agree with, and shun those of a different mind-set.

As he struggles on to succeed at his lofty goals, the sufferer may become depressed, which especially afflicts the elderly with this preoccupation.

Sound like anybody YOU know? (I would hate to have my wife read this article. I suppose if I don't bring it to her attention, she won't see it for a long time; by then, I can figure out a response when she says, "I TOLD YOU SO!")

Now, be aware that I am not qualified to claim that anybody discussed here actually has a personality disorder related to obsessiveness. But, there is a common thread: they're all very fussy, demanding, hypercritical; and that deserves to be looked at, with respect to the need to have a healthy lifestyle with hobbies that are both satisfying and enjoyable, not merely burdensome and anxiety-creating. My determination to write this article, at last, came about when I read a couple of posts to the newsgroup sci.astro.amateur by a gentleman who plaintively begged for advice about his Celestron 11 inch aperture Schmidt-Cassegrain scope. I have one of those too, and perked up my ears, as it were. His problem was that, in order to improve his planetary imaging, he decided to upgrade his telescope, and bought a C-11 on the basis that it was employed by such skilled experts as Damian Peach to make solar system object portraits that are almost breathtakingly perfect, so staggeringly detailed that one blinks twice in amazement: some of 'em look like HUBBLE pictures, for gosh sakes!

So the poor hapless chap acquires a C-11, but the results aren't all he'd hoped for. Looking around on the Net for suggestions, he came upon an elaborate website -- I refuse to give its link here! -- with step by step instructions for taking the thing apart; adding improved interior baffling; putting in a cooling fan to shorten thermal stabilization delays; and applying a method to clamp the primary mirror. Now, I too had seen that website -- and had recoiled in HORROR. The thought of taking apart what is palpably a precision engineered device with mechanical tolerances of unspeakably small dimensions, in both the metal working and optical surfaces, just made me shiver. Furthermore, the idea of CHANGING it according to some silly scheme of another amateur astronomer... well, that was too much for me! I simply have faith -- derived from my best viewing experiences with it -- that this complex product, while not perfect, is a well-designed device, assembled carefully and delivering high performance, in a world that all too often is casual and sloppy.

Furthermore, as a deep sky observer back to the middle 1970s, and a solar system viewer back to the 1950s, I have acquired a sort of "feeling" for optics. A good, experienced observer can tell when a telescope or binocular delivers good performance, even though the air is often unsteady. One realizes this so that when those rare still moments occur in our atmosphere, when the "swimming pool shimmers" die down, and the stars and planets tighten up to perfect orbs, one can sigh with relief, and say to oneself, "yes: the telescope is just about perfect -- tonight!"

And when it's NOT perfect (which is most of the time), one knows that it is due to (a) the air; (b) heat currents in and around the scope; (c) the air; (d) maybe the eyepiece; (e) the air -- und so weiter.

But, the telescope probably is "less imperfect" at any given moment in time, than the air between the telescope and the stars and planets, for it's in the few miles of air right over our heads that all the damage is done to the image. Or, at least about 95% of the damage. For a very expensive telescope from a world-class manufacturer is capable of excellent performance under ideal conditions. It's just that conditions are not very often all that ideal.

A Schmidt-Cassegrain scope like the C-11 is in fact aligned and collimated at the factory on a complex optical bench with lasers. I watched the Celestron technicians collimate a small Maksutov spotting scope in their 'clean room' in Torrance, California, about 20 years ago when I visited the factory. The magnified "artificial star" image at 900x was textbook-perfect after the technician applied this little tweak, and that little adjustment. I was amazed, and impressed.

When I bought my own C-11 and set it up I found that right out of the box, the alignment was nearly perfect. I have had many years' experience under my belt and have made numerous scopes, owned C-8s and other SCTs and Newtonian reflectors, and have done collimation on optical systems hundreds of times. I have no laser collimator, but I use an artificial star that is created by taking a very small shiny and perfectly round plastic sphere that is mounted on a plastic base, across the street from my house, placing it in the sun on top of a helpful neighbor's fence. I suppose it is located about 100 yards from my shady driveway, where I set up the telescope and allow it to achieve temperature equilibrium. After some hours of cooling, I carefully collimate the telescope, trying to use as much as 600-800 power if possible. I can assure you that with my C-11, or my Orion 10 inch aperture SkyQuest Dobsonian, I can achieve "textbook quality" Airy disks, very similar either side of focus: the mark of good optics, and exact axial alignment.

My Artificial Star, illuminated at a distance by a flashlight.

I had to make only the SLIGHTEST adjustments of two of the three collimation screws on my C-11, and left them alone for many months. Then, I got a bit uncomfortable about having let this go for so long, and repeated the test. It was nearly perfect; I made only the slightest adjustment now of ONE of the three collimation screws: perhaps the teeniest, tiniest fraction of one degree's turn! It probably made no noticeable difference under normal observing conditions. And in the interim my scope had bounced around in my travel trailer and my SUV over heavily rutted mountain roads for months, and had been through many dozens of observing sessions: and the collimation was fine. I really needn't have bothered to check it.

So, I can only shake my head when I read all too often about people who think that they need to buy "so and so's knobs" to replace the collimation screws, so that they can tweak the scope CONSTANTLY. It's not only unnecessary; it's actually damaging to the telescope, and will certainly wreck one's observing session with anxieties.

Yes: my C-ll looks almost this good
when I check its alignment with my 'artificial star'.

The picture above is an ideal diffraction pattern; the one I get with my artificial star, looking across the paved street during the day even when it is cool (~60d F) is not as quite as stable due to residual heat currents, nor is it quite as smoothly elegant and perfect; and the background is bright, not dark, due to light across the visual field. But, it does look excellent, with symmetrical unbroken rings and perfect concentricity. Below, you can verify the concentricity of the scope's alignment from a snapshot made of the computer monitor during a sky shoot setup, as I was centering the defocused image of a bright star through my webcam.

Snapshot of computer monitor showing output of webcam
on C-11 while centering a defocused light point source image.

Now, the poor fellow who posted to sci.astro.amateur explained that he had made these modifications to the scope without having the necessary alignment equipment of a proper optical bench, and with no recourse to a laser collimator or "artificial star"; when he put it all back together again and tried to image with it, the results were now not better as he'd expected, but far worse. He posted a test picture of a defocused light point-source image and asked for comments. Here is what it looked like:

The defocused pattern now shows definite
signs of aberration from "pinched optics".

This is all that I shall say about this particular situation, except to sum up that all his efforts went for naught and were counterproductive. No matter what his C-11 may have looked like with an artificial star test BEFORE he altered it -- we can never know now -- it is ruined. Whether this is permanent or not is unclear, as he glued things to the back of the primary mirror for the purpose of attaching clamps. (And, one wonders why: planetary images are done with short exposures of fractions of a second. Only persons desiring to do very long exposures where the scope travels widely across the sky need worry about clamping the primary mirror rigidly.) And as far as my experience with the C-11 collimation, after it seemed not to change for many months: I was pleased that another observer agreed with me, posting this confirmation: "I find the C11 does hold collimation well unless it is transported. Even then, only very small adjustments are needed."

A mediocre Jupiter test picture by the author, using a
cheap, obsolete $30 webcam and free processing software.

Now, assuming that your telescope is good, how do you go from Jupiter pictures that are like the one I did, with a home brew, modified, discontinued, obsolete $30 webcam, processed with free software that came with my $29 scanner (above) to the images done by Damian Peach? It's not "magic", and requires optimizing everything in the whole system, including the seeing. At each step, repeated testing against standards can quantify whether an improvement or degradation has resulted. And, the process is extraordinarily expensive in terms both of time, and money. I have a friend who is a world-class astrophotographer. He has spent more on cameras, telephoto lenses, test equipment, telescopes, mounts, drive motors and correctors, filters, developing lab and chemicals, scanner, computer, monitors, software, and travel expenses, than I have spent for all the cars I have ever owned in the 45 years since I got my first driving license; indeed, he has probably spent on this hobby of astrophotography almost as much as my house cost my wife and me here in San Jose, in an inflated real estate market! Furthermore, his thirty-plus year experience cannot be calculated in terms of lost productivity, because nobody would be able to work that long and hard for an employer; slavery has been abolished!

Here are some only slightly-disguised incidents that I have observed when overly-fussy, never-satisfied amateur astronomers have decided that their scopes and accessories were not good enough and needed modifications. (Some of these were things that I did, and subsequently learned hard lessons from unintended consequences.)

• Never Satisfied With Anything About the Scope: This one occurred to me. Back in the mid-seventies, my friend Rich Page was helping me put together my first real deep-sky scope, to replace my old childhood refractor. He found a used 10" mirror in a home-made tube assembly, roughly put together in a crude fashion without a mount, but at a very good price. I purchased it, and Rich repaired the badly mangled tube, and made me a pipe mount, painstakingly grinding down the rough pipe fittings until it functioned as smoothly as possible. The scope still was rather crude, but it was more than serviceable. Yet, I was never entirely satisfied with it. I used it for almost a decade, constantly fussing with it. First, I found that it was not able cleanly to split close doubles. An apodizing mask helped, but I finally decided it had a turned edge, and masked it off to about 9-1/4 inches of aperture. That helped! But, it still needed work... and work on it I did, incessantly. I changed the focuser. I had the mirrors recoated. I changed the diagonal. I replaced bits and pieces of the mount, the bearings, the scope cradle, the finder, the mirror cell... STILL I was unsatisfied. Finally, I got so tired of it, feeling constant frustrating pangs when moving over from it and looking into Rich's scopes, that I could stand it no more. I found a dealer who was willing to take it on trade, and got a commercial telescope that was nice, shiny, and clean.

     THE COMMERCIAL SCOPE WAS WORSE! The image was fuzzier, dimmer, unsatisfactory. The tracking was erratic. The finder was next to useless. I should have stopped sooner, and simply enjoyed my improved scope, rather than being constantly dissatisfied! I learned from this, and never made that mistake again. (I still have recollections of really amazing observations made with that scope... sigh.)

• That darned focuser shakes the scope!: A friend of mine had been lucky to acquire a one-in-a-million "perfect" C-8. I swear that the finest view of Mars I ever had, at 400x, was with his scope, bar none. I was in awe of it since my own C-8 was "soft" and lacking contrast. His was a gem!

     But, after owning it for many years, he finally had the yearning to "upgrade" and "improve" it. One long-standing problem was the fussiness of the focuser, and the tendency of the fork mount to vibrate a bit while the scope was being focused. "I'll buy an electric focusing motor!" he decided; "that will fix the vibration problem." But, when he got the focuser motor system home after making a hundred-mile round-trip to the dealer, he found that the shaft would not exactly fit on the old C-8 knob (which had apparently been slightly changed over the years.) What to do? The knob did not seem willing to come off no matter what he tried. As a last resort, he decided to saw it off! After clamping the shaft at the rear of the scope, he sawed...and sawed...and sawed. But, there was an unforseen circumstance. Instead of finding a solid metal shaft, he told me that there was some kind of spring loaded thingamabob INSIDE the focuser knob shaft, and when he sawed through that, something broke. CLUNK! A perfect C-8, now badly and permanently crippled and in need of a factory parts replacement job. All because of a well meaning and perfectly rational attempt to eliminate ONE tiny, small problem by adding an external component. But, as always seems to happen, there is a slight difference or incompatibility; one thing leads to another... then, disaster. I haven't had the heart to ask what he did next; it's too painful a subject to bring up.

• The Customer From Hell. Back when I was selling telescopes for a very good dealer, we had a loyal customer who was a very dedicated observer with lots of experience. When one highly regarded manufacturer first brought out a new line of refractor scopes with a fluorite element, offering superior freedom from chromatic aberration, he decided -- after doing lots of investigation -- that THIS was the very thing to satisfy his long yearning for a "perfect" scope that could deliver spectacular star images and clean planetary views. So he ordered one from our store.

     The scope came; he picked it up; but he came right back the next day. It was not "perfect"; there was a slight aberration of exactly focused star images, perhaps a tiny bit of astigmatism. There was also a TRACE, barely perceptible but there to be sure, of a bluish halo on 2nd magnitude or brighter stars: it was NOT SATISFACTORY. We took it back and gave him the only other one in stock. But the same thing happened, with only slightly varied criticisms; though this time we carefully checked it and decided that the scope was not, in our opinion, defective, and that it should be sent to the factory for an optical test to confirm the alleged "problems". In due course, the test report came back: the scope was well within specs, and the factory considered it perfectly fine. The customer insisted, however, that they replace the scope -- and they did, sending him a new one. You guessed it: ditto. I never found out how this was resolved, because I quit that job before the situation ever concluded. After some months, I believe that the customer was still arguing with the dealer, and the maker, about the scope: one that had such magnificent performance that I'd gladly have kept it for the rest of my life.

     I cannot really claim with any absolute assurance or conviction that the customer was WRONG, or even unreasonable. Let's just say that his expectations were very high; were never met; and that no one else involved in the transaction had his 'sensibilities'. To the dealer he was probably "the customer from Hell"; but in his own mind, he was merely a person who wanted what he perceived as being what the product claimed it would deliver in the rather glowing descriptions of the advertising copy, confirmed by the enthusiastic reviews he'd read. The fact that no one else had his acute sensitivities to various flaws might well mean that other people were merely willing to allow for some tradeoffs, and to be practical; and that he simply was not. But, he might have been, objectively, "right" about his criticisms. The question is: when and where will such a person ever find satisfaction?

     Furthermore, I recall that the refractor's retail price at the time was only $1,400: not nearly the equivalent cost of a custom-made high end apochromat refractor telescope, which would have typically been at least three times more. Yet, the customer expected the same kind of performance that was being touted as the superb optical quality of high-end scopes. So, he had assumed that a company selling mass-produced refractors that were in stock at telescope stores would be supplying a product that met the standards of the high end. Whose mistake was that? (And, don't all of us know by now that advertising is propaganda intended to influence? While an ad should never lie, It is not 'absolute truth, measured by precise scientific and objective standards.')

• The Unrepeatable Defect: I had an acquaintance who consulted with my best friend, a visual observer, about the quality of a certain high-end refractor that he owned. Was it a good telescope? The owner thought so; I did too. My friend then ordered one from a manufacturer on the other side of the country, and got on a waiting list of several months for the expensive product. Meanwhile, both my best friend and I continued to enjoy fabulous, exquisite views of planets and deep-sky objects, revelling in the superior optical quality and stability of the instrument.

     But, when my other friend finally got his scope, he put it to a different use: long exposure astrophotography. In due course he discovered that the objective cell had a problem when the scope tube crossed the polar axis: it shifted due to some small change in the mechanical properties of the components of the cell. He did not know if it was a problem with the lenses or the spacing or the mounting or the outer metal case; but whatever it was, 2 to 3 hour exposures of faint galaxies were very slightly trailed; as far as the photographer was concerned, they were ruined. So, the scope went back to the maker.

     Sadly, this telescope could never be made to function the way that my friend desired. The manufacturer finally gave up. He could not duplicate the problem; his factory was at a different latitude, longitude, weather and temperature region, and altitude. The mirror cell shift stubbornly refused to reveal itself. The maker was apologetic, but could not make the problem occur, so was unable to FIND the cause, and to FIX it.

     The end result was that the scope was put up for sale, at half-price, and some other user found himself or herself the proud new owner of a magnificent scope; and the former owner, and the maker, learned a thing or two from the whole episode, though neither were happy at all about it! Here, the problem was likely due to asking the wrong people for advice: visual observers. They had no experience doing two or three hour prime focus astrophoto shots though this long focal length telescope, and could not know if there was any tendency for a mechanical flexure problem. I think that the reason that the maker could not duplicate the problem had to do with the difference in altitude and climate, and the fact that shipping the scope cross-country probably changed it subtly. Really, here no one was to blame; it was a high end product that satisfied most users, but not this particular one, and his particular needs. Yet, how would anybody have known, or anticipated, any of this trouble up-front? In this particular series of events, both the maker and the user were practical, rational, careful, precise, honorable, dedicated persons. There was no attempt to pass off a problem, sweep it under the rug, or to deny it. And the user was patient -- up to a point. That there simply was no solution is an interesting example of the phenomenon of the imperfection of our physical world and the limits of our abilities, in the endlessly fussy hobby of astronomy, with its endlessly fussy and painstaking opticians and astrophotographers.

• Mr. Cheap demands perfection. Have you ever known an amateur astronomer who went way overboard, and spent more money than necessary to over- equip himself, merely because he thought he found a "bargain too good to pass up"? He has far too many scopes, eyepieces, filters, and fussy little accessories than he will ever need or use, "but they were great bargains on clearance sale!" Yet, he has the attitude that even though they were bottom- basement products, or obviously shop- worn and dusty, they'd better be perfect! And he'll spare no effort to fuss with them and wring his hands about it. Yet, the idea of paying top dollar for fancy name brand products that deliver near- perfection right out of the box is abhorrent.

     Well, Mr. Cheap couldn't pass up some bargain eyepieces, fancy looking ones with glitzy names that were made in China and had the same specs as the expensive ones. He bought 'em and immediately noticed the differences that set them apart from eyepieces costing four or five times as much. Edge distortion, poor coatings, lousy threads, barrels of varying diameters, poor metal work: you name it, these eyepieces had what budget "fake fancy" products suffer from when closely scrutinized. But, Mr. Cheap at least wanted them to be clean. For when he looked at the Moon, he found that all over the field of view were little black specks, in sharp focus (it seems that the simple design of the eyepieces caused the field lens surface to be right in the focal plane, an undesirable thing since dirt and dust would also show up in focus.) He blew compressed air into them. No good. He wiped the lenses with tissue dipped in cleaning fluid. Made it worse; added streaks. He tried to swab them and swirled the streaks around. Everything made the problem greater. FInally, he decided that the solution was disassembly, and THOROUGH cleaning!

     He set up his optical bench with care, cleaning off the surface until he could eat off it with no fear. He arranged his high wattage gooseneck lamps for perfect illumination. He put on lint-free cotton gloves. Everything was ready for the surgical procedure!

     Yet, after the cleaning and reassembly, he discovered to his horror that now the eyepieces looked strange when used in the telescope. The field was fuzzy. And surely the magnification was wrong now: too high. What had he done? He repeated the dissection and thought the lenses looked right, in the proper order. But they gave even worse optical performance than when he started -- and dust specks were still quite visible! Finally, he took one back to the dealer and compared it to a new eyepiece out of the cardboard box. Yes: the thing was horribly wrong. He ripped it apart and laid it out on the table, scattering bits and pieces and getting the lenses hopelessly grimy. By flipping over two of them, pair by pair, and reassembling and comparing, he FINALLY found the problem, which he'd caused by systematically erring in their reassembly. He then got the eyepiece to work right, but with a hopelessly smeary image. Oh, well: at least one final cleaning procedure could clear this up. (It almost did. Now the eyepiece is only, say, 10% worse than when it was brand new. And, it still can't be used on the Moon: unless one wants to ignore the little black specks.) He rationalizes this: yes, they were cheap; yes, they are poorly made and dirty; but now he has a complete set and can adjust his magnification up and down by increments of 2%!

Update: Here's another example of the same tendency, taken from a post to the newsgroup sci.astro.amateur made on 3 December 2006:

After struggling for some time to collimate my newt - I believe I've finally cracked it!

In the interest of maximising performance I decided that my grubby eyepieces need a wipe - when I did this there still seemed to be evidence of dirt inside so I split my 10mm - mistake! Two lenses and a spacer popped out and now I don't know how they go back!

I've tried a few different ways - each time trying to focus an the roof of the house opposite mine. Each time I can focus the middle of the image but the outside is slightly out - if I focus the outside the middle goes slightly.

Please can someone suggest the correct way for the lenses to go?

Yes, surely. The correct way "for the lenses to go" is for them to stay in the eyepiece, and to be kept reasonably clean to begin with; and NOT to be allegedly "cleaned" by means that either makes them grubbier, or wrecks the entire ocular.

• Is there really ANY good astronomy software?! I'm the culprit in this discussion. Read this rant, if you have the time, energy, and patience. (My only weak justification for this unreasonable failure to accept the inevitable is that I claim that I have definite goals in mind that can be achieved. And after monumental effort, I finally managed to come extremely near to the goal, clamoring up the asymptotic curve. I can just see the end; it's a little farther, almost within reach...)

• "Oh: it's just an easy, foolproof modification!" Far, far away in an alternate, out of phase universe's distant fairy-tale land there lives a crotchety old telescope owner who regularly visits a certain mythical telescope store. And in this fictitious store in Grimm's fairy-tale land there is a nice friendly clerk who shall be nameless (BUT YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE!) And one fine sunny day this charming fellow was enthusing about how he had improved his telescope remarkably by adding flocked lining paper inside the tube, to prevent stray light reflections. He was so pleased with himself that he took the mythical store's business card and jotted down the website URL for the fairy-tale company selling the paper (WHICH I WOULDN'T MENTION IF YOU GAVE ME A POCKET FULL OF NICKELS!) In due course, the friendly mail-man brought a gigantic cardboard tube to the house of Mr. Crotchety, the cranky old telescope man. And he and his patient wife, Mrs. Crotchety, struggled and grunted and finally wrenched apart the tube assembly of their wonderful Dobsonian telescope, which had given many hours of pleasure but which had a very slightly shiny inside tube, which could be noticed when viewing the Moon or Jupiter. The "simple modification" promised by the mythical telescope store man was anything but; Mr. and Mrs. Crotchety groaned and fussed and worked for some hours cutting up the flocking paper, taking off the backing from the gummed side carefully so as not to wrinkle it up; applying strips of it to the tube, following the instructions precisely; then reassembling and collimating the scope (which took hours to do, the mirror cell having been moved and twisted the slightest bit.) Finally, the telescope was completely and happily modified and Mrs. and Mrs. Crotchety took it out after dinner and delightedly viewed the Moon, sans any spurious reflections. End of story?

Sadly, no. For on their next astronomy trip, the following week, they left the telescope outside in a grassy field overnight, covered up with protective blankets as they had done many times before exactly this same way. The next night, however, Mr. Crotchety was shocked to discover that he couldn't see anything in the eyepiece. Looking inside the tube assembly, he was horrified to see that half of the flocking paper had peeled away from the tube, and was balled up in a bunch, just MISSING the primary mirror. The heat of the sun, through the protective blankets, had slightly warmed the inside of the scope and the tube assembly; and the paper had peeled off. The dismayed Mr. Crotchety carefully pulled the mess out, and was able to use his scope that night. But the cleanup and repair took him several hours, and now about half of the flocking paper is gone. The rest of it has been carefully glued in place. Mr. and Mrs. Crotchety are not happy campers now. And they have no intentions of taking the scope apart again and applying MORE flocking paper, this time with extra glue. A talk with the friendly, mythical telescope salesman confirmed that he HAD NOT installed this paper on THAT model telescope, and did not realize that the interior surface would not be able to hold the glued paper. The moral of the story is that perfection has a price and that "simple modifications" are usually a fool's errand. But, since this is all just a 'fantasy' (isn't it?) then you needn't worry your heads about such warnings, children. All's well in fairy-land, in our other alternate "astronomer's" universe, where the sun always shines in daytime, it's always New Moon at night, and telescope mirrors don't get ruined by collisions with gummed paper.

• Why Bother to Observe? It's too cold; there's too much light pollution; etc. etc. etc. The following senario might be a real individual, a composite, or a complete fantasy: I'm not admitting. He, she, or they may have attitudes that have frustrated me so much over the years that I no longer even want to bother to ask for companionship while I observe.

     This 'fictitious friend' has a permanent bad attitude about the conditions he'll experience. It is ALWAYS too cold (yet, he never seems to have taken the trouble to bring his heaviest coat; he's lost his cap; he forgot to bring the Thermos bottle of cocoa...) There is ALWAYS too much light pollution to take a picture (but he never bothers to try using an h-alpha filter.) The seeing is LOUSY (so why not observe as often as possible, to maximize the chances of getting a good night; and why not go to a BETTER PLACE with higher altitude, than the old favorite spot that is convenient but has bad local air-flow?) At our observing sessions, he wants to CONTROL things, and insists on imposing horrible rock'n'roll music on my classically trained aesthete's ear; and once he spent an hour pestering me to smoke a wretched cigar that he brought for me; when I absolutely refused, he petulantly complained that I had "ruined his plans" -- and later, as I expected, the nicotine made him so woozy he could hardly see through his scope. And, he's always late, because he forgot some part or other for his scope, or cameras, or mount. It's infuriating! Despite my suggestions about getting organized, making lists, setting everything up in his workshop, and starting early enough to have time to think carefully without rushing, NOTHING ever improves, and he repeats the same behaviors over and over again. I've lost patience, and finally had to decide that it was better to observe alone. I miss him! But, my time is growing shorter and shorter as age creeps on, and I have to get things done; and as a "control freak" myself, I prefer my choice of creature- comforts, not somebody else's. Amateur astronomy requires organization, and at least a bit of optimism and enthusiasm: or you'll never have a good time or accomplish anything; and by now, I know for certain that the situation will never change. Furthermore, merely complaining about things without ever making any corrective adjustments is just plain foolish and useless.