Ready...set...Go!

Time is very precious to backyard telescope enthusiasts. Before they shell out their clams on expensive astro-gear, they will likely try to answer one very important question: "How often will I get to use it?"

What they're mostly wondering about is how often the weather will cooperate. But other things can interfere with stargazing, like work schedules, family commitments, and health issues, to name a few. 

It's difficult to justify spending a lot of money on something that you don't have the time to use. And when you stop and think about it, astronomy, unlike most other hobbies, has some very undesirable aspects that can be motivation killers. 

You have to stay up late, for starters. Some people just get tired when they stay up late. But for others, staying up late can be downright uncomfortable. They get headaches and nausea when they stay up late.

Another problem with astronomy is that you have to be outdoors, and outdoors at night means that it's probably cold, too. And if it's not cold, it's buggy. Then there are the strange animal noises in the darkness. If you're in your back yard, your neighbors might wonder what you're doing out there and they'll turn on their yard lights to keep an eye on you, which destroys your night vision. 

Now if you think being tired, cold, nauseated, mosquito-bitten, frightened by animals, and blinded by the neighbor's kilowatt LED aimed directly at you (Why can't people install proper night lighting?) isn't bad enough, there's also the problem of how astronomy can interfere with your other leisurely activities, like partying with friends or just sitting around watching your favorite TV shows. You gotta be just plain weird to turn down dinner invitations so that you can go out into your back yard by yourself and spend hours looking at the stars through a telescope. Oh, yeah. That's another thing: you will be alone in the back yard because, for whatever reason, it is practically impossible to find a willing companion for backyard astronomy.

The sad part here is that, when it comes to deciding whether or not to set up the telescope for astronomy on any given night, it's often the telescope equipment that is the ultimate deal-breaker. It might be so heavy that on some nights, you just don't feel like lugging it out there. Or, if you're into astrophotography, the telescope — with all of its subcomponents, like mini-computers, guide-scopes, cameras, dew heaters, and all of their associated cables and power cords — may be so complicated that you feel like it will take longer to get it ready than the time you have available that night to use it. 

Hold on a second, though. You're tough enough and motivated enough to go out there in the back yard late at night. And after all, the sky is clear. So, what if that equipment setup time could be cut in half? And what if there was no heavy lifting? Imagine that your telescope, camera, computer — all of it — was fully assembled and ready to go. It's sitting there on wheels, and all you have to do is tug on the handle and roll it out into the yard.

Well, that's precisely my situation! My telescope weighs about 100 lbs. When it's 10 o'clock at night and 45° F outside, I certainly don't feel like carrying that thing outside in pieces and putting it all together. A backyard observatory would be nice, but quite frankly, the thoughts of applying for a building permit and hiring a contractor to build me a $5k to $15k observatory don't give me the warm fuzzies! 

So, I did the next best thing: I ordered a Scopebuggy (Google it) from a company in Elephant Butte, New Mexico.

A Scopebuggy is simply a steel-tube frame with wheels. I put my CPC-1100 telescope on there and secured it with some Velcro straps. Next, I attached my laptop to the tripod with double-stick tape. I Velcroed a power strip onto one of the tripod legs, and I Velcroed my MicroTouch focuser's control box onto the accessory tray. With everything assembled and most of the wires connected, it's a simple chore to roll the Scopebuggy out through the doors of my storage shed and park it in a good spot for imaging the night sky. 

The Scopebuggy comes with three leveling screws that can be used for stabilizing. Some people even lift their scopes off the Scopebuggy when they get it positioned in the spot where they want to do their imaging. They prefer to have their setups on solid ground. But I haven't found either of those precautions to be necessary. I don't use the leveling screws (just adds to the setup and takedown time) and I keep the scope on the Scopebuggy while I'm imaging. All I do is park it against a rock. The place in my yard where I set up is level, so the Scopebuggy stays put all night, and the automatic 3-star alignment always completes successfully. 

Thanks to the fast f/2 optics of the HyperStar, I don't need to take long exposures with the camera. And that means that I can use the telescope in alt-azimuth mode. There's no polar alignment required. The setup process is reduced to a simple 3-star alignment for Go-To capability. I roll the scope out into the yard, park it anywhere, do the 3-star alignment, and then connect the laptop to my home network using the remote access feature built into Microsoft Windows. Takes about 20 minutes from rolling the scope out of the shed to taking my first images of the night, in the comfort of my living room. It takes less than 10 minutes to put everything away in the morning.

A scope on wheels that's ready to go whenever the sky clears up is all the observatory I need. 

Recently, while traveling through New Mexico, I decided to stop and have a look at Elephant Butte Lake. I'd driven past it on I-25 many times, but I'd never seen it.

Elephant Butte, NM

I did not find a land formation resembling an elephant (and, by the way, it's pronounced "byoot" not "butt"), but after observing the beauty of the lake in the desert, I wondered if I could find Scopebuggy, which is located somewhere in Elephant Butte. As I headed back to the freeway, I was surprised to pass by a property where an assortment of Scopebuggies were lined up in front of a building. I reasoned, "This can't be a coincidence!" And I turned my car around and pulled into the driveway.

Scopebuggies are perfect for telescopes of all sizes

Within minutes I was speaking with the proprietor, Larry Fisher, and I got to thank him in person for his awesome product. What a wonderful guy! A visionary whose simple and affordable product has changed the lives of thousands of amateur astronomers like me.

Chatting with Larry Fisher (left) of Scopebuggy