Telescope Lending Campaign
It’s 2020, it’s COVID, it sucks, nothing is open, everyone is tense and exhausted… You know what… You need some fun, something hands-on, something to take your mind off this mess we’re in, something you and the family can enjoy together… You need some TLC… You need our telescope lending campaign! Quit moping and get scoping!
COVID has kept us away from each other but shouldn’t keep us away from the sky. We’ve been dreaming of hosting star parties but that doesn’t look very feasible in the near future… So we thought that instead of you (our guests) coming to us, let’s bring the telescope to you! We want YOU to host your own star party with your family! You won’t be alone, we’ll help you assemble and align the telescope via cell phone or video call!
In strict accordance with current safety standards we’ve made extreme efforts to ensure that our gear is sanitized from the knobs on the tripod to the eyepiece cups.
Our sanitizing method was:
- gloves on during handling
- alcohol cotton swabs on all face or hand areas
- eyepieces, focus knobs, switches, buttons all wiped with alcohol
- complete wipe down on tripod, battery, handbox
- minimum 4 hours in sunlight outside
- packed up in open air box
- brought to your door with mask and gloves on
Gear choices:
You can choose from 2 items currently. A Newtonian goto telescope OR the astronomical binoculars.
The Nexstar newtonian is a powerful scope in a low-cost, small portable package. Hear me out… A starter scope can be bought for much less, but then it gets used much less. We’ve been using this scope in the field for over 5 years, it’s that good. It is the smallest, affordable truly GOTO telescope on the market that gives you large telescope results. See the equatorial banding on Jupiter as well as its major moons. See the Cassini division in the rings of Saturn. Moon viewing is pretty incredible, AND, as a bonus, by attaching the solar filter you can actually point this at the sun and view the scant sunspots we’ve got lately. Choose this if you really want to dig into putting it together and getting the alignment done – a fairly easy task, but also fairly technical. We’ll help you though!
Telescope specs:
- Celestron Nexstar 130SLT (more info here) by the way, I HIGHLY recommend this brand and model for starter telescopes, it has everything the bigger scopes have for a small price. You get really good value with this model.
- Tripod with GOTO mount (it’ll find stuff for you!!)
- Battery pack (so you can take the scope anywhere)
- Several eyepieces and a barlow
- Solar filter
- Hand controller
Astronomical Binoculars:
If you’re more into moongazing in near 3D, I highly recommend the binoculars. They are extremely comfortable and you can spend several minutes at a time just gazing at a stereo view of our nearest neighbor. Saturn and Jupiter are great, and you can even see Jupiter’s 4 brightest moons through them!! Go with this choice if you want something crazy easy to set up (screw in one bolt), nothing technical at all, just set your eyes and mind free into the night sky.
Binocular specs:
- Celestron Skymaster 15×70 monster binoculars!
- Binocular tripod with counterweight
Rules:
- Keep it for 7 days
- Try not to lose or break anything
- Throw it in the box when you’re done
- Leave it at your door for us to pick up!
Getting started:
- Email us at texasdave2@gmail.com and send your name and address, let us know you want to borrow the TLC scope
- No cost, this is absolutely free, we’ve got some cash leftover from previous donations that we’re using for supplies and gas.
- We are always taking donations though!
Donating!
Simply visit this link to our GO FUND ME page and give us some cash and we’ll keep doing activities like this and more in the future!