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"Fun" Equipment

There are recommendations all over the web comparing, evaluating and recommending astronomy equipment and accessories.  A good portion of this website talks about equipment suitable for an inexpensive telescope program.

This page contains my personal recommendations for or comments about "fun" equipment.  I share what I'm liking, suiting my interest and perhaps narrow needs.  It's not intended to be a comparison of a product and its competitors.  My intent it to highlight items that unique and without direct competitors.

I refrained from calling this page the "Toys" page, because, if I'm being honest, every piece of astronomy equipment falls into the "Toy" category.  My focus here is for "non-essential" stuff that is primarily "fun".  For example, I love my Nagler 31, but that eyepiece is essential and wondrous.  It is fun, but it is fundamentally a serious thing.

My initial recommendations are:

 

Planetarium App Guidance

Hand-held, character-based menu navigators are obsolete; immersive, telescope-tracking sky map navigation is the future.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then look at this picture below and answer this question:

which interface is more intuitive? 

Celestron, Meade and Orion have WiFi adapters so that you can augment their command-line handcontroller interface with Planetarium App Guidance (I use SkySafari). 

AstroDevices.com offers a WiFI adapter for dob/encoder-based scopes.

I've had good luck with their inexpensive Nexus II adapater.

Below is a video (poorly shot with my phone, sorry) demonstrating SkySafari on iPad navigating a Meade Lightbridge 12 via the Nexus.


AstroDevices offers a full computer-plus-wifi Nexus DSC.  It's more expensive, but it's a far more robust solution, eliminating the need for a standalong computer (like SkyCommander, ArgoNavis, etc.).  I like the interface quite a bit more than most handheld computers.  I don't need a manual to know how to use (the last thing you want to do in the dark is have to read a manual).  It turned my Obsession/ServoCAT/ArgoNavis/SkySari system from something torturous to use to something fun again.

 

Yes Watch "Astronomy" Solar/Lunar Watch

This is another "lifetime" piece of equipment.  I really expect to be wearing one of these watches when I die (hopefully that won't be for a long time).

I really love this watch.  Just from the information shown on the picture at the right I can see a crazy amount of information:

  • the time
  • the moon phase
  • sunrise and sunset times
  • moonrise and moonset times
  • where the sun is spatially
  • where the moon is spatially (15 degrees east of the meridian)
  • day length vs. night length

It really put me back in touch with the sun and the moon, and it's useable everywhere 24/7 (unlike the rest of my equipment). 

I'm so impressed with the interface, I devoted several pages to it.  Here's my review on CloudyNights.com

 

Dark-Skys DS-1 Home Planetarium.

I don't own this yet, but it looks amazing.  Imagine a realistic representation of The Milky Way - in your house!

This is considerably more expensive than other home planetaria.  Some of that is because they built an amazingly beautiful piece of hardware - see the Nightlight Mode.  Part of it is because it's Chrome Disk show over 4 million stars!  They do sell their 4-million+ star disks for the cheaper alternatives, but the bulbs of the cheaper are considerably dimmer.

 Dark-Skys DS-1 - Nightlight Mode

Wood Wonders Eyepiece Case

Almost all frequent observers have some way to carry their eyepieces around.  I convinced my wife that I should have Ron from Wood Wonders build one of his custom cases for me and that she should pay for it as a Father's Day present.  It's beautiful and very, very functional.  I rotate through a lot of equipment, but knew I'd be keeping it for the rest of my life.

It was a great gift, I think of my wife and son every time I use my telescopes!

 

 

 

 

Questions or comments? Email:Jeff Martin