Hard times

Hi all. Ive been thinking recently that what with this credit crunch, whether people are having to make a sacrifice with their beloved hobby in order to have the bare necessities. Every day i see more and more people selling their kit and packing up. Prices are plummeting on gear that is worth far more. Like on astrobuysell there are scopes going for next to nothing and many sellers are going all out and out of astronomy. its a sad thing to see.

I myself am depressed with this weather. I havnt had the scope out in 8 months!!! Micheal o connell was kind enough to lend me his DSI but yet have i had the chance to test it! I have the opportunity to buy it but havnt been able to test it out and have some fun yet unfortunately!

I really think theres only a certain amount that one can hack of looking of images of the heavens on a laptop screen. im getting itchy arsed at the moment and its not looking great either.

Is our beloved hobby coming to a bit of a rough patch? I reckon to an extent, yes.

This season of all seasons in ireland is the most opportune one to observe. yet the activity on these boards is nowhere near what it used to be. There are many regulars alright but is there a massive amount in the background just watching them post???

How i long to see the eerie wisps and overshadowed craters of the moon, the great big spot on jupiter, the extensive rings of saturn and the fantastic glow of the double cluster filling my hyperion eyepiece!!!

Dont even know why i posted this just wanted to vent my frustration i suppose.

Matthew Cahill(star deprived)

Yea,
I recently noticed an upsurge in astromart in the numbers of what were once v. hard to get naglers.
As for the weather, it has certainly been worse over the past 2 years or so compared to what I remember in the earlier years of the 2000s, what can you do!

Matthew C wrote:

Hi all. Ive been thinking recently that what with this credit crunch, whether people are having to make a sacrifice with their beloved hobby in order to have the bare necessities. Every day i see more and more people selling their kit and packing up....

Thank your lucky stars you didn't put that up tomorrow (monday) morning instead Matthew! :silly: Sheesh, what a downer!

Seanie.

Dave_Lillis wrote:

Yea,
I recently noticed an upsurge in astromart in the numbers of what were once v. hard to get naglers.
As for the weather, it has certainly been worse over the past 2 years or so compared to what I remember in the earlier years of the 2000s, what can you do!

Dave,

I agree with you on both counts. For example, there is now a frequent supply of Astro-Physics refractors and equatorial mounts.

As for the weather, even here in paradise we are having problems and which are a recent phenomenon. Because of my analemma work, the weather is something I have been keeping a very close eye on and I have observed repeatedly how our (local) weather is progressively getting worse.

Anthony.

Hi Matthew and all, I too am feeling the starin alright, I guess we are just going to have to grin and bear the downturn over the next year??? or so, it's a real pity.

yet the activity on these boards is nowhere near what it used to be

Fully agreed, I honestly think that there are 2 resons for this:
1. With the transition over to the new board format (thanks web team ), there is no facility for new topic notifications via e-mail, I too really miss that

2. The weather, it's certainly the worst in many years.

Anyways, don't give up just yet, I have been doing a bot of observing and astrophotography lately, i'll post the results soon

Keith..

Keith,

i agree i miss the notifications too!

Funnily enough im listening to my immortal by evanescence while reading this depressing post!:silly: