Optimism or what ?

Sorry ruby lady

Anniebach, there was I envying you your skylight! Some years ago I slept in a room with a big octagonal skylight when I visited my daughter. When she moved I really missed going to sleep and awakening with a view of the sky above me.

I've always been interested in astronomy, and i would love a telescope but i find, from talking to people who have them, if you haven't anywhere to have them permanently set up, they rarely get used, and people tend to think they will be easy to use, and, by and large, they aren't, even the little ones. We went to visit some friends recently that we hadn't seen for a long time. His family had bought him a wonderful, huge, digitally controlled telescope for his 70th birthday, and after he'd shown it to me and i had drooled all over it, he said, "you can take it home and try it for a while if you like - i'm b******d if i know how to work it! I thought you just looked through them!" I didn't take him up on it - i wouldn't have known how to work it either (i only talk a good telescope !

I can hear DS groaning in horror at the comments about star gazing, he is an Astronomer and he would snatch your arm off for a chance to stand half way up a mountain. There is more than a few twinkly stars in the sky to watch and telescopes are motorised so that it can track whatever you are watching.

Heard about a dark sky event on R4 last week which involved nighttime cycling! I would have enough trouble in daylight.