My Telescope.

[Gwaithmir]

My first telescope was a 3" Tasco Refractor with a wooden tripod. It came in a wooden chest, which I discarded after building my first observatory. I used my observatory for a few years, then had to lock it up while I served in the army. It had deteriorated over time and, when I returned from Vietnam for the last time, I built a new observatory with a fiberglass dome. I upgraded my telescope with a clock drive and made a pedestal mount in the machine shop where I worked. My observatory was featured in a half-page article in a local newspaper during the late 1980's. The article included lunar and solar photos I had taken, as well as pictures of Comet West (1976).