I joined the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada – Ottawa Centre a little over 5 years ago. I had a telescope when I was a kid, one of the cheap handheld ones, and predictably, I saw almost nothing with it. Fast-forward 30 years, and I bought a Celestron NexStar 8SE telescope with some inheritance money. During those five years, I had no end of alignment challenges that I couldn’t quite figure out, so my enthusiasm for all things astronomical, including Ottawa Centre, waxed and waned like the moon — when things went well, it was great! When things didn’t go well, I felt like an idiot.

Finally, in 2015, I eliminated one huge problem with the help of a member at a monthly star party; in 2017, with the help of another member for a special one-hour “problem-solving” aka “see if Paul is just an idiot” session, we found a hard-to-diagnose problem with the controller setup; and Bob’s your uncle, we solved the intermittent alignment problems. I was good to go. And so, partly in gratitude for the help the Centre had given me and partly in a desire to be more involved, I became the “acting Star Party Coordinator for 2017”.… Read the rest