Hello Friend,

First of all let let's get this out of the way:  Daylight Savings Time is just plain stoopid.

I had to sleep in an extra hour, to make up for the hour of sleep that I was going to lose otherwise.

Now here is sad tale, that you can learn a valuable lesson from.

Yesterday, a delightful fellow dropped by the store. I had not seen him in years so it was great to catch up.
Turns out he had been away from the hobby for a few years and was just getting back into it.

Eddie (not his real name) had recently acquired a 10" dobsonian.

And he had come in to pick up a few 
accessories like a Telrad to replace the Godforsaken finderscope on the instrument that  the previous
owner had painted a gawdy gold puke type of colour.

Why people why?

Eddie purchased a 2x barlow lens for his dobsonian.
(note to newbies: A barlow lens is a device for doubling the magnification of any eyepiece that you already
own. So a 50x eyepiece becomes a 100 power eyepiece. 
It's an economical way of increasing magnifications on a telescope. 


All fine and dandy.

Now here's the kicker: 2 hours later Eddie was back to return the barlow lens.

WTH?

Yep, seems like Eddie decided that the barlow would work better at 1.6x than 2x so he took it apart, to "modify" it.

Of course that was a bad idea, unless your know what you are doing.

 And even then....it's a really bad idea!  Because you likely DON"T know what you are doing.

Fingerprints were on the glass optics, etc....     So of course we refused to take the barlow lens back at this point.

It was suggested to Eddie that he should purchase another eyepiece that would give him the exact magnification
he wanted to get. 

Now Eddie really meant well and was just trying to get an optical edumacation, 

Moral of the story: Don't believe everything you read on the internet especially when it comes
to "expert" opinions about optics.

 But if you take things apart, and you really don't know what you
are doing, especially when it comes to optics, you know that karma is going to come down upon you.

Todays Sunday sermon is now officially over.

It's back to Unicorns and Fairytales!

Clear Skies,

Ray Khan

PS  We have just about finished doing the annual inventory; So we be posting some really good deals
on our new website feature: Daily Deals.  Be sure to bookmark it and check it regularly.