” I might have to invest in one someday. I mean, my neighbors installed that annoying light last year. You know, the type that is just overpowered and lights YOUR backyard? Yea. That type.”

Shotgun

That said, I have to put my $0.02 in and say that seeing something with one’s own eye (even if it’s not with the “naked eye”) is completely different than looking at a picture. (Even if those pictures are pretty cool.)

And it applies outside of astronomy as well, as anyone who has visited the National Air and Space Museum or the National Archives in Washington, DC, can attest to. (The Apollo 11 command module. A rock from the Moon that you can touch. The Declaration of Independence. The Constitution. And so on.)

I might have to invest in one someday. I mean, my neighbors installed that annoying light last year. You know, the type that is just overpowered and lights YOUR backyard? Yea. That type.

Taller fence. Shiny material. Parabolic shape. ’nuff said.

The ‘Stately’ ones yes, but the ‘Deluxe’ version is available in most good stores.

Bob(Big)

Pleasuredomes only in Xanadu.

J/P=?

So there, Ironman.

I have a friend that was close to getting one of those, but for some reason he couldn’t. Would have been awesome. He had fairly good skies there.

Oh, and… I can’t see the add, either

I agree! I heartily welcome our new Exploradome overlords.

IRONMAN – to each their own. There’s something important to be said about seeing things with your own eyes. I’ve found that in teaching kids about the universe, one look at a real object with your real eyes makes a bigger impression that the super-duper-holy-cow-look-at-that photos that we can pull of the Interweb at any time. Sometimes there is no substitute for experience, even if it’s underwhelming. Kinda like making your own butter!

I envisage a situation where you are saying to your neighbour:

“Wow, this is a real piece of iron-nickel meteorite. What are the chances of it falling out of the sky and hitting the floodlight in your backyard like that?! They must be astronomical …”

I never quite understood the emotionalism associated with directly seeing a celestial object. I mean, I’ve looked at a dark sky and through a scope of course, and it’s kinda cool, but the clarity is a bit disappointing – bordering on annoying – in it’s tantalising lack of details that I already know to be there, (thanks to available images better than a backyard telescope will ever provide).

Staring at what is frequently “white blobiness” for hours on end just ain’t my bag baby – and I wonder if Galileo himself would even bother with such a thing if he were alive today. If I were him I’d be thanking my lucky stars, (no pun intended), that I didn’t have to bother with such a frustratingly primitive piece of junk.

I’d rather be sitting in the comfort of my own home pulling down colour-enhanced shots off some orbiting platform that can detect wavelengths my own eyes can’t even perceive, rather than fight off mosquitoes at 2am in some dark godforsaken hole where human beings obviously don’t like being.

It all seems like absurd emotionalism to me – especially since looking through an instrument of any kind is hardly looking at something with your “own eyes” anyway.

Does a lack of interest in such a thing make astronomical phenomena any less impressive? I don’t think so. And I’m under the impression that the knowledge we’ve gained with less ‘live and direct’ methods blows amateur observations out of the water.

So forgive me if I think you guys are nuts, and I hope Polydome can help bring you guys out of the 17th century – especially if that thing is big enough for a 48″ plasma and a wet bar.

Well, I can’t hang around here talking to you guys all day – butter doesn’t churn itself you know.

Still nothing. I guess they didn’t pay very much.