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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Backyard winter sextant observatory?
From: Ken Muldrew
Date: 2005 Apr 20, 20:25 -0600
From: Ken Muldrew
Date: 2005 Apr 20, 20:25 -0600
> All those glove tricks just don't work for me. I like to take my > time, I need reading glasses now, and have to juggle a flashlight and > notebook. No fun in winter. I've tried it a bunch. I liked Jared's idea of an infrared heater. That way you can stay warm without having to heat up the surrounding air. I remember many cold nights waiting at a bustop with an overhead IR heater where you could stand under the heater and be toasty but take just a couple of steps away and you're freezing (even in real cold: -40?C). They are remarkable devices for any activity where you don't have to move around. Sounds like just the ticket for astronomy or celestial sights. I'm going to look for one myself for next winter. > Offlist someone sent me a URL for a local bubble supplier, but the > refraction issue is too daunting. It would vary too much over its > surface, unless it was very expensive and optically optimized. You could use a cheap bubble but cut out a slot that you can rotate into place (like a telescope housing). Not much heat would escape through the gap. I guess that wouldn't work very well for lunars, though. > Back to the hot rum, I guess. There's always that! Ken Muldrew.