Do you own astronomical equipment?

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have an old celestron powerstar 3, an 8 inch s c t. fairly gimpy due to much trauma so it rarely gets used. too bad.

I too live in one of the most light polluted city in the world, but I travel about 30 km to the countryside (by bus!), with my cheap 90mm Makasutov and camera tripod for star glazing.

i live too far from good viewing sights and conditions for astronomy to be a practiceable hobby. too much smog from wood-burning stoves/open fires, too many tall trees, too much streetlight polution. but i watch star hustler on PBS and every now and then i can see the larger things that jack points out, through a wide-angle 7x set of binos. i have found that any "department store" telescope is totally worthless, with too much vibration/shake/fuzzy optics/insufficient resolving power in general. also, any binos stronger than roughly 7x introduce too much magnified hand shake to see anything but weird light streaks instead of pinpoint astronomical objects in the night sky.

I have a 10 inch reflector.

Got a telescope that sucks, doesn't magnify much and can't f***ing stay licked in place so we can see anything.

unfortunately, that sounds like a typical "department store" 'scope, which is cheaply made, with a tiny poorly-polished and uncollimated mirror. you need something with a solid motorized mount, with at least a 5" mirror to be able to reliably resolve anything more distant than the moon and larger planets. it is also best if you live in a dark place away from streetlights and pollution, at a higher elevation. if you can't see the milky way from where you use your 'scope, that is a sign of generally bad viewing.
astronomy is an exacting and expensive hobby.

yes, I have a 4" newt, a 12" newt, a 6" mirror i was grinding myself (with a strehl over 98%!) that will be the primary of a telescope soon and a 10x50 bino.

and soon I'll have my own observatory (the walls are ready, the dome is missing).

hopefully where you place your observatory is good and dark, with clear viewing.

Only a 2.3*10^8" planet. It keeps a steady course about the local sun useful for long-term parallax observation, but whoever designed it put the life-support gas storage directly above the observation deck so the seeing's terrible.

about 6.5 visual limiting magnitude (considered really good in my area), but we usually have terrible seeing conditions because of humid air. only 180m above sea level

at least you're not surrounded by tall trees.

I have a telescope, but nowhere dark/treeless enough to use it.

you're gonna have to be willing to drive you and your 'scope at least a half-hour outside of town before it will be dark and clear enough for good viewing.
hint- if you can easily make out the milky way, then it is adequately good viewing, but anything less and you might as well forget it.

that's true, I'm surrounded by short trees standing on tall hills just behind the house. I have maybe 20 degrees stretch of sky to observe from the valley I live in

I have a CGEM 1100HD. I just recently purchased a Canon XSi and hope to attempt some astrophotography soon.

just curious, how high above sea level is your viewing place? how is the viewing in monterey in general?