Neighborhood Portrait

While visiting Elinor last week on our swing through Texas, she asked for our assistance in helping clear some of her husband David's estate. I've found homes for most of his photo gear with a donation to the scholarship fund of the local camera collectors, and took a couple boxes of books for my own library (a small percentage of what remains!).

One of her offerings this trip was a small telescope in the corner of David's computer room - a 70s vintage 5" Celestron telescope. Elinor always believed that our mutual friend Bob Goff, who worked for Celestron then, was responsible in some way in it's construction, so held on to it. Since he was just about my best friend in Tucson, Elinor thought I should provide a home for it, which I'm proud to do. David had tricked it out - mounting it on a sturdy tripod with very smooth altazimuth movements. It makes a perfect grab-and-go scope to keep near the back door.

To that end, I set it up to take a peek at the quarter moon tonight. It needs a touch of collimation alignment work, which I'll leave for another night, but thought I'd snap a shot of the moon with the Canon XSi. Here is a 250th second, ISO 400 with the F/10 telescope. Not bad for untracked tripod mount!