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* You
consider
the
moon a major annoyance.
* You consider Jupiter 'light pollution.'
* You consider meteors 'light pollution'.
* You consider the milky way 'light
pollution.'
* You contemplate ways of destroying the
Earth
because it's in the way.
* You pack Dry Ice around your head to
reduce the
"noise" from your retina and optic nerve.
* You refuse to use the ladder with your
20" f/6 at
the Winter Star Party stating, "If I use that, the objects are too far
north."
* You consider the H-II regions of
distant galaxies
as individual observing targets.
* You spend most of your time looking at
or for
objects you can barely see.
* Your favorite objects are objects you
can barely
see.
* You enjoy looking at faint fuzzies
with the
smallest possible aperture.
* You enjoy looking at faint fuzzies
with the
largest possible aperture.
* You like to choose objects that are
easier to
imagine than to see.
* Your observing schedule demands that
you search
for objects in twilight.
* You wonder how your favorite objects
missed
getting included in the New General Catalog or the Index Catalog.
* You're not sure that anything in this
solar system
counts as Astronomy any more.
* You're amazed that anyone needs
artificial light
to read charts.
* You could do a Messier Marathon from
memory, if
you still bothered with Messier objects.
* You can read all the NGC abbreviated
visual
descriptions without using the key, but you have to be careful not to
cheat by just remembering what things look like.
* You view a major earthquake as an
opportunity for
a close-in dark-sky star party.
* You are attending a major star party
(guess which
one), and you ask the organizers to turn down the Milky Way.
* You believe M13 ruined your dark
adaptation.
* You welcome (and have even considered
instigating)
power cuts, but only if they occur on clear moonless nights.
* You observe M42 at the end of the
sessions because
it DOES ruin dark adaptation!
* Your choice of a new vehicle is
determined by the
size of your scope.
* Vacation time is planned around the
Winter and
Texas (or other) Star Parties.
* Arp is not a funny sound, but the name
of one of
your favorite galaxy catalogues.
* You challenge friends by saying, "Lets
do
something stupid" as you hunt for deep sky objects on a lazy, full-moon
night because you are faint-photon starved.
* You find auroras a complete annoyance
because they
ruin sky contrast and dark adaptation.
* You memorize the NGC catalog and can
recite type
and magnitude off the top of your head when asked "What is a NGC 1000?"
* Your ideal site would require oxygen.
* Your ideal vacation would be in
Namibia, but...
* Your ideal telescope would be
immovable.
* You prep your eyes by applying pupil
dilating
drops until they open to 10mm.
* You travel to Australia to read your
star charts
by the light of the Milky Way.
* You plan a two month trip to Australia
and spend
all of it in the middle of the continent trying to find every southern
DSO.
* Instead of vitamins you take billberry
pills.
* You actually know where to get
billberry jam, and
make a point of consuming some prior to observing sessions.
* You'd rather observe than go on a hot
date.
* For some reason you're always
depressed when that
time of the month (full moon) occurs.
* In preparation for another DSO bout,
you carefully
massage your eyes to make sure all your rods are discharged.
* You pay $3500 for a pupil enlargement
operation
even though you own a 1 meter light bucket
* You complain you can't really see the
faint stuff
because the Gegenschein is too bright.
* You consider how to blow up the SUN in
order to
reduce light pollution.
* While spot checking the collimation of
your dob,
you note that with concentration you can just begin to detect spiral
structure in the dust coating your primary.
* You take deep-sky pictures during a
total eclipse
of the moon.
* You bitch about severe light pollution
when the
limiting magnitude is "only" 6.5.
* You actually know how to USE setting
circles.
* You have NO use for setting circles.
Star hopping
to an 18th mag. smudge is a breeze.
* You actually USE 'Uranometria,' and
can quote page
numbers.
* You frequently disagree with Burnhams,
and have
seriously considered publishing your OWN "observer's guide."
* You see absolutely no value in using a
Telrad.
* Your principal finder scope is larger
than 80mm.
* You consider 15 minutes to be a
'quick' exposure.
* You see more DSOs on your laptop
screen during an
evenings' observing session than you do through the eyepiece.
* You have seriously considered starting
up your own
anti-satellite lobby.
* You have blackened the edges of your
eyeglasses.
* You are briefly taken aback by the
brightness of a
normal flashlight under "normal flashlight" circumstances (power
outages, e.g.).
* You hire a crop duster to spray the
surrounding
area because last night the fire flies kept ruining your dark
adaptation.
* You think GM's Daytime Running Lights
are some
kind of evil alien scheme.
* You can make ten trips lugging
equipment back and
forth across a cow pasture without stepping on a single cow pie, using
only the illumination of that garishly bright Milky Way to guide you.
* You wear sun screen during full moon
periods.
* You wear sun glasses during full moon
periods.
* You wear red sunglasses all day in
preparation for
viewing that night.
* You've been thinking that a 14th
century black
monk's hood is a pretty cool idea.
* Night lights are a nuisance in your
house.
* You wear an eye patch during the
viewing session.
* The dome light of your car is painted
red.
* You paint the LED's on your equipment
with red
fingernail polish so that they are dimmer.
* You begin to realize that even the
deepest red
flash light is affecting your vision.
* You remove the LED on your drive
control panel,
because THAT ruins your dark adaptation.
* You use an infrared flashlight.
* You keep thinking that if only the
stars would go
away, it might really get dark.
* You always set your scope up so that
you can't
move your car until daylight.
* You bring a gallon of coffee (or 12
pack of Diet
Coke) to the viewing session. If the caffeine doesn't keep you awake
the urge to "go" does.
* You keep a cross-index of stuff that
you have
looked at on 3x5 file cards organized by object catalog number, so you
can easily find your logged observations of any specific object.
* You have elective surgery to replace
your eye's
natural lenses with f/0.8, oil-spaced, apochromatic triplet objectives
designed by Roland Christensen.
* You think about how to smash the
nearby street
light without getting caught.
* You think about how much the penalty
would be for
smashing the nearby street lamp.
* You're caught by the police climbing
light poles
at night trying to "unscrew" the bulbs.
* You ask your neighbors over to star
gaze, so they
will know to turn out their porch lights.
* You complain you can't really see the
faint stuff
because the Zodiacal Light is too bright.
* You can talk with a red flashlight in
your mouth.
* You can actually understand someone
talking with a
red flashlight in THEIR mouth!
* You get a "DSO" tattoo on your arm.
* You name your kids after deep sky
objects.
* In order to provide better spousal
communication,
you buy your wife a light bucket and compare notes.
* Your wife places a picture of herself
in your
favorite star atlas, to remind you of what she looks like.
* Your spouse is wearing a sexy evening
garment with
wine glasses in hand and you want to stay outside in -10 degree
temperatures to catch a few more NGC's.
* You get red contacts made 'cuz the red
goggles
have been letting too much white light.
* You glue glow-in-the-dark M-objects on
your living
room ceiling for practice observing during overcast evenings.
* When the sequence "OBAFGKM" feels more
natural
than "ABCDEF..."
* You plan your trips past the
Arctic/Antarctic
Circle to coincide with the appropriate solstice.
* You look forward to that time of the
night when
certain edge-on spirals pose at 45 degrees.
* You pour those Cheerios for breakfast
at 6:00am in
the morning only to realize you haven't been to bed yet.
* You refer to your Cheerios breakfast
as "my bowl
full of M57's.
* You start looking for the central star
in one of
your Cheerios... and you see it.
* You drive to the observing site in a
Ford
Galaxy... whose license plate number starts with "NGC"
* You can make observations of mag 18
galaxies from
your driveway with your favorite Tasco 50 mm refractor!
* you see the letters "sex" and your
first thought
is of the constellation sextans!
* You look forward to that time of night
(year) when
the Milky Way goes all the way around the horizon.
* Find an 8" F6 with a really good
primary and think
"This will make a nice finder on my big DOB."
* You just finished a 30 minute exposure
and realize
that you never cocked the shutter.
* You drive 130 miles to a remote site
in pouring
rain and sit there all night hoping it will clear.
* You have learned to judge your dark
adaptation
(and the quality of the dark site) by how good M-13 (or some other big,
bright DSO) looks naked eye.
* You have learned to judge your dark
adaptation
(and the quality of the dark site) by how good M-33 (or some other big,
low surface brightness DSO) looks naked eye.
* You try to convince the "shallow sky
observers"
that comets and asteroids are much more interesting than planets.
* Your collection of astrophotos weighs
more than
you.
* Your collection of disks of CCD photos
weighs more
than you.
* You can point out the locations of
deep sky
objects, in broad daylight.
* You have considered making mega -
binoculars out
of two 10" scopes.
* You have considered buying nearby real
estate in
order to demolish it.
* You believe telescopes should qualify
for
religious tax exemptions.
* You regard sky charts as 'Ancient
history' books.
* You gave up smoking not for health
reasons but
because it ruined your night vision.
* You have considered moving to another
hemisphere
to see some new sights.
* You get O-III Filter contact lenses
* You can see planetary nebulae in other
galaxies...
without an O-III filter.
* You know the magnification &
FOV of all your
eyepieces in every telescope ever made.
* You divorce your wife because she's
"too
distracting" at night.
* You have replaced your eyes with that
of a cat...
and still use night-vision equipment on your scope.
* You are saving to put your own
telescope in space.
* You've memorized the Palomar
Sky-survey because
"its good as a finder-chart."
* You have a 16"-telescope... as a
finder.
* You were too busy at night to have
made children.
* You try to use gravitationally bended
light to
view distant objects.
* You can visually identify the redshift
of quasars.
* You try to view galaxies... through
the
spiral-arms of other galaxies.
* You make your own filters.
* You make your own eyepieces.
* You live in the desert, but only at
night.
* You don't have a CCD-camera because
the PC-screen
ruined your adaptation, and "it looked better visually anyway."
* You can find more than 10 non-NGC
objects...
without looking through the scope.
* You find 17th-mag. stars "annoyingly
bright."
* You think you can see the
Hubble-Deep-Field...
without a telescope.
* Your eyes only contain rods.
* Your pupils are always larger than 7mm.
* You've painted yourself black to avoid
reflections.
* You've painted everything in a
100-mile radius
black to avoid reflections.
* You're dreaming about painting the
whole world
black.
* A mirror with 95%-reflectivity is "not
good
enough."
* You cool your surroundings with liquid
nitrogen to
avoid thermal uprising.
* You're making a suit to cool yourSELF
with too.
* You have to use sunglasses when
viewing objects
brighter than 15th magnitude.
* You have forgotten what the world
looks like
during the day.
* You have forgotten what the world
looks like at
night, 'cause you're always looking up.
* You know the periods of extra-galactic
Cepheid
variable stars... from experience.
* You have found several comets, but
you're too busy
observing to report them.
* You have reported several comets, but
they're too
faint too see by anybody else, so they don't believe you.
* You go to bed if naked-eye visibility
is worse
than 7th mag.
* You claim to have seen Stephan's
Quintet without a
telescope.
* You find Pluto too bright to view with
a 4-inch.
* You've become so nearsighted (by
squinting), that
you no longer need eyepieces.
* You've coated your eyes so that
they're
anti-reflective.
* You only look at objects when they're
at most 5
degrees from the zenith.
* You can accurately track objects with
your DOB at
700-times magnification... with one finger.
* You have a voice-controlled dome so
you don't have
to leave the telescope.
* You have trained your bladder to hold
it for up to
18 hours on those long arctic winter nights.
* You think the telescope is part of the
family.
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