My telescope mount got knocked over by a squirrel last month in my backyard in Ohio

I had the whole setup out at 2 AM trying to get a clean shot of the Andromeda galaxy, and a fat gray squirrel ran right up the tripod leg and sent my 8-inch Dobsonian crashing into the bird bath, which cost me $150 in collimation tools and three clear nights to fix - has anyone else had wildlife ruin their astronomy photos?

3 comments

3 Comments

bailey.xena12d agoMost Upvoted

Three hundred and fifty bucks for collimation tools sounds like you bought the whole optical shop instead of just a laser and a Cheshire. Yeah it sucks but a Dobsonian isn't exactly fragile, I bet you could have fixed it for way less.

tyler82212d ago

Nah man you're probably right but tell me why my cheap laser collimator showed up and the damn thing wasn't even aligned out of the box, like I paid thirty bucks for a tool that's supposed to fix my scope but it's broken itself. So I spent another forty on a Cheshire and then I figured I might as well get a proper autocollimator and a sight tube while I was at it and somehow that turned into three fifty at checkout. But hey at least now I own enough tools to collimate a spaceship if NASA ever calls me up.

mark_fisher484d ago

Well "bought the whole optical shop" is funny but you're forgetting cheap lasers are often worse than nothing at all.