Image 154 of 224: Full Resolution

Around 12:30 AM, we packed up and headed out to the ostrich farm with Ted and Paul. Their site was pretty close to the centerline -- meaning that if someone needed floater assistance from us, we'd be in a good spot to go help them out.

Nic helps Ted and Paul set up that Dob. These were relatively inexpensive telescopes (about $3500 each), but worked pretty well. They are full GOTO systems -- that is, they have two motors and a handpaddle, so you just enter the coordinates and the scope will slew, and then track as the Earth rotates.

In the past, portable occultations have been done a lot with large Celestron / Meade SCT's. For comparison, a 16" Meade SCT runs $16,000, and weighs 318 lbs uncrated. The relatively low weight and cost of these scopes made this trip a lot easier than it would be otherwise.

A 16" telescope is big enough to get enough signal:noise on our 15th mag target star, but anything less would be insufficient.