Well, I drove 80 miles out to the desert Saturday to attend a combination star party and barbeque - starbeque. I took the 1000mm f/8 mounted on an equatorial mount and my K10D. There's lots of nice folks in the Orange County Astronomer's Association, and we all had a great time eating and yakking about the heavens, telescopes, CCD's, mounts, weather, etc - and eating of great food.
As evening approached, clouds came in. By the time it was dark, the North Star was nowhere to be seen as it remained behind the clouds for most of the night. About 11:30 pm a hole opened up to the north and we finally got to line up our scopes on Polaris. Shortly after, it socked in again. Most of the sky was clouded over most of the time and holes were to short for photography. Shucks. Well, I gave up at about 3:30 am and started to break down the equipment to head home. I'll be out many times again and when I finely get to see black sky, I'll PESO a photo. While I was breaking down the site, I lost my balance when I got a sharp pain in my left hip. (It's not healing now form the motorcycle mishap and the doctors are sending me from specialist to specialist.) Anyway, I instinctively stretched my arm out toward my table to catch myself and knocked the K10D off and onto the concrete setup pad. A K10D hitting concrete is a very *sickening* sound. The viewfinder glass was smashed and the electronics is acting goofy (technical engineering term for what the f***). This baby's going back to Pentax for repair and refurbishment. I'll let you know what they charge when I get it back. I have a backup K10D, so I'm not out of digital business. Regards, Bob Blakely --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes." - Robert Frost -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
