Source: Hubblesite.org You won’t be able to see Saturn looking this cool from a home telescope. Trust me.

After my post on Nature Study Supplies, Missy asked this question, and I think it’s a good one:

Can you post something or maybe even write more here in the comments about why you don’t like telescopes? A telescope was on our “wish list” and you have made me wonder if we should just not get it. Thanks.

When we only had two children, hubby and I both bought each other a telescope for Christmas. Not deliberately of course, but because we both think alike on these things. He saw a telescope on sale for a great price at Natural Wonders, and so did I, so we each secretly conspired with our Christmas money to buy them, and obviously one of them went back.

We soon found out something, living in the city at the time: City lights interfere with the telescope in a big, big way. You couldn’t really see much of anything because of the lights all around our neighborhood. We also had one little old lady (every neighborhood has one) call the cops on us for having a telescope “spying” on people. Um, yeah. In…the…sky….

So, naturally we were disappointed at the time,  but also excited when we moved up to a more rural area. Still, the lights were a little bit of a problem, but we were able to position the telescope behind our barn so that, although our view of the Southern sky was hindered slightly, we still were able to see quite a bit.

Except…there were a few other issues no one warned us about:

1. If you even so much as breathe too heavily on your telescope while you are trying to look closely at an object in the sky, you may inadvertently and easily knock it out of your view with the slightest bump. As you might imagine, this makes it an exercise in extreme frustration for those of us with little kids.
2. Objects in the sky move. Okay, we knew this already, but what I didn’t know was that although I can’t see it with the naked eye, after spending all that time lining up objects in the telescope, the object didn’t stay in our line of view with the telescope for too long.
3. Focusing the telescope, depending on the telescope you have, takes great care and patience. You aren’t just going to say, “Okay, kids, lets go out and look at Jupiter!”, and then have it in your view within five minutes. It could take up to a half and hour or maybe even longer.
4. What you see through the viewfinder of your telescope will look like photo bokeh at times or blurry lights…not like the photos you see on the Discovery channel or the Hubble Website. You’re using an amateur telescope, not Hubble.