Sailing Home

I had a nice long Christmas vacation, and right at the start of it I decided to spend most of it on fantasizing.

I decided that this was a mid-life crisis thing, which I've been in the midst of for a couple years now. I am at the point in life where I finally come up for air after thirty years or so of straight work and wonder How Did I Get Here and What the Heck Am I Doing?

Men do all kinds of crazy things when they reach their mid-life crisis. They buy speed-boats or fast cars. They leave their wives and find new wives. They get hair implants.

What are we looking for when we do stuff like that? I think we're saying I'm scared of the dark. I'm pretty sure that my death is closer to me in the future than my high school graduation is in the past, and I want to stay young.

With those examples in mind, I decided it wouldn't be so bad if I allowed myself to fantasize about any damn thing I wanted, no matter how silly or meaningless. I theorized that it was like a one-person version of the exercise of "brainstorming" that I've done once or twice in corporate settings. Don't suppress any ideas, no matter how apparently bizarre, because you never know what might come from one of them.

So at one point, of course, I found myself daydreaming about telescopes. What else?

"Honey?", I called into the living room at one point, "Can I spend two hundred thousand dollars on a telescope?"

I only call her "honey" when I am about to talk nonsense.

"Sure!" she called back. "No problem!"

The telescope of my fantasy was the 1-meter monster from Jim's Mobile. I do not know the actual price, I was just estimating based on the cost of smaller scopes, and throwing in some extra for a nice, permanent dome.

It did not upset my fantasy at all that my financial net worth is probably negative just now, and I doubt that I could borrow money for a new car let alone two-hundred large for a telescope. So what? we're fantasizing, right? That's what fantasy is for!

But, alas.  Upon some rocks even the gossamer ships of Fantasie must founder, spilling their cargoes of hopes and dreams, desires and schemes into the cold salt water of reality.

The problem is, I live in Michigan.

Let's say I get two hundred large to spend.  In fact, why not make it four hundred!  There' s no limit on fantasy-money, is there?  (Apparently not.  Just ask the Fed.)

Let's say I buy a beautiful enormous telescope, and put it in a beautiful dome.  In fact, let's put that dome up on top of a tower, and I will wear white and silver robes like frikking Gandalf every time I go up there!

Fine.

You want to see what my first few nights of observing would look like?

Night one.  Clouds.

Night two.  Clouds.

Night three.  Starting to see a pattern here.

The Great State of Michigan, the largest state east of the Mississippi, the state with the longest coastline in the continental United States, once the most prosperous state per capita in the union  -- Michigan is not on anybody's top ten list of places to put telescopes.

I checked.  It truly is not.

Now, I'm sure that Jim would say "Yeah, that's why I made it mobile!"

Okay.  But where will I go pulling a monster like that?  Frikking Arizona?  And then who will take care of my ducks, while I am wearing my Gandalf robes and enjoying the crystalline skies of far-off countries?

Okay -- but why not just imagine being somewhere else, then?  If you're already imagining impossible things, why not one more?

Well, um, shucks.  I think it's because my land, where I have built a house and planted oak trees, where I have planted American Chestnuts that were almost extinct -- I think that my land has extended its own roots down even to the level of my dreams.  I can imagine having lots of money to spend.  I cannot imagine leaving this place.


The Ship of Fantasy, the Ship of Dreams, broken on the rocks, its cargo of glowing hopes floating into the dark waves.  Flickering.  Darkening.


And that was when my Christmas Miracle happened.

I kept believing.   Wiping the bitter tears from my eyes (more salt water!), I climbed back on to that foundering vessel Fantasie, wrestled her battered wheel around and launched off once again upon the darkling waves of the Internet.  We smote the sounding furrows!  Our purpose held!

If I could not imagine owning a telescope in Michigan, then I would instead imagine the great instruments to come!  I would read about instruments with names out of legend:  the Giant Magellan Telescope.  The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope.  The European Very Large Telescope.  The European Extremely Large Telescope.  (I guess the Europeans must have shot all their poets quite some time ago.  Seriously guys.  Could you use some help naming these things?)

And it was while I was looking at the Giant Magellan with its seven great mirrors, and the Europäische Unglaublich Riesige Teleskop, with its seven hundred and ninety-eight hexagons -- that's when my dreams looked back at me out of the internet, and smiled.

I found a page and thought, "Huh.  What's that?"

It was a place called iTelescope, and they had telescopes for rent.  By the minute.


In retrospect, it seems obvious.  All astronomical photography is digital, right?  Digital stuff travels over wires, ja?  For years we have had "GoTo" telescopes that, once oriented, can find any star, any point in the sky you want.  So why not robotic telescopes, operable over the internet, that you can use for a few bucks a minute, and then download the picture you took?

Why not indeed?

Except I didn't know about it, and would have never have found it, if not for the Good Ship Fantasie.

So, would you like to see my new telescope?
It's big, it's beautiful.  It is of a quality in its optics, its mount, and its camera that I did not even know enough to dream about.  And it's real.

It's 20 inches across.  Even larger in metric!

Finally, it is in the distant land of Mayhill, New Mexico, at an altitude of 7300 feet, where the skies are not cloudy all day.

My ship has come in.