Mars Mania LA Edition

Greetings Kari (and take me to your leader!):

Saw this news item on Yahoo! News. And in there, they have a wonderful picture of mars.



The view I had on Tuesday night was nothing like that!

Please be assured I’m not a flack for Costco or Celestron but I have to tell the story of telescope buying in LA. My buddy Harold (see comment to your post from yesterday) went to Costo to buy this Celestron telescope for $159 with rebate. After three stores, he got one telescope. My brother and his wife decided it was time to get one for their two kids and the kid in them and the Costco near them was sold out and gave them a rain check.

Celestron showed up at the Griffith with sales reps and telescopes for the public to use so you got to give credit to the Celestron marketing department.

Anyway, last night, we set up the scope and took a look and it was just great!

If you saw the Mars picture above, did you notice the ice cap? The image we saw was quite a bit smaller and a lot less detail. Think whitish disk the size of a large pinhole. We could just make out a slightly brighter spot on the little disk under 100 x and figured that must be the ice cap!!

The local news coverage showed a helicopter shot of the freeways near the Griffith observatory and it was a parking lot. Also, the reporters are finding retailers have seen their inventory of telescopes disappear. Stimulate the economy!

So is there a telescope in your place? Was there one in your childhood home in the dark skies of Western Kansas? Is there one in your future? Stimulate the economy!

Cheers,
Rene



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UPDATE: I heard on the radio an interview with Dr. Ed Krupp, director of the Griffith. He said the crowd estimates for Tuesday night was 10,000!!!