After a break of some years, I have found myself back on the committee of our local astronomy society. We’re in the process of tidying up the observatory, a process which we began yesterday evening, and when I looked in the secure storage where the scopes are kept I found a familiar-looking 6″ dob. It has an orange tube made from a gas pipe and a plywood base, and it was wearing a very fetching floral-patterned shower cap which I removed for the photos. I am pretty sure it is not my old 6″, as I don’t remember mine having the aluminium ring around the top of the tube (or the floral-patterned cap!), but otherwise it is identical. Several of these were made and some are still kicking around somewhere, presumably including mine since I offloaded it.

It was nice to see the old thing, it brought back some nice memories of finding my first deep sky objects with my own, very first, astronomical telescope!
During the meeting it was mentioned that it was the society’s 35th anniversary coming up. It occurred to me that I have been a member for 18 years, I joined in summer 1992 – I was a ‘mere slip of a thing’ then, as a member, one of my oldest astronomy friends, jokingly said to me. Nowadays, while I am by no means fat, you can’t say that I am a ‘mere slip’, unfortunately!