A good pair of binoculars will be sufficient. You didn't need a ton of light gathering capability for casual planet viewing like this.
Telescopes are a bit of a rabbit hole. Many cheap mass market telescopes are also known as hobby killers. A 6" dobsonian (reflector) is a good starting point for deep space objects like nebulae and star clusters. For planetary viewing Schmidt-Cassegrain telescopes are great.
However, learning to use a telescope requires time and patience. Taking it to the field for an event like this for the first time may be frustrating as you will be spending most of the time figuring out how to collimate and align it.
I certainly don't mean to discourage you from getting one though.
A good pair of binoculars is much easier to use. They require no collimation out of the box and show an upright image that makes it much easier to navigate the sky, at the cost of reduced magnification and light gathering capability. You will be surprised how many celestial objects even 10x magnification reveals that are invisible to the naked eye.
My brother started at "I'll just buy one telescope" and last I checked has just finished constructing a powered observatory on some remote land where the telescope and rooftop motors can be operated entirely remotely through cell connectivity. This is a worse hobby for your wallet than having a boat.
That’s pretty normal tack. It’s just most people can’t get there vs not wanting to. A not insignificant amount of money is required to get to that point. It costs nothing to have the desire though
Someone else did this, then built 20 more next to it. Now it's a business where they sell telescope time to researchers and hobbyists. I imagine it's profitable for them.
Binoculars are a bit misleading though as most people tire of trying to keep hold of them and track steadily. If you’re going to the level of getting some sort of mount/tripod for the binocs, you might as well step up to a telescope with GoTo features with tracking.
My opinion is about the SF Bay area. Yes we have easy access to nature, year round good weather, and tech jobs are more plentiful compared to many other locations in the US (that's a lot of positives admittedly).
However the Bay area is also a cultural desert. There are no other major metros within a reasonable driving distance, and a paucity of museums and cultural activities in SF itself. Especially compared to living on the US east cost or even Los Angeles.
Distances are long, the municipal water quality is abysmal, everyone is hyper competitive and living in a bubble where being a millionaire is considered poor.
The road quality is not befitting a first world country, the cleanliness of streets and interchanges is below par, and public transport is a joke, enforcement of traffic laws is non existent, and taxation is ridiculously high relative to what the government invests in infrastructure. The California government is probably one of the most corrupt in the country.
I only live here because moving would be too disruptive to my kids. Once they go to college, I'm getting out of here.I just wanted to temper the jealousy sentiment. :)
I enjoy face to face discussions and whiteboarding sessions on tough technical topics. And I'm a fairly introverted person.
You get 2-3 competent engineers in the same room with no screens, just a whiteboard, and magic happens. No amount of zoom or virtual whiteboards will replicate that experience for me.
Also I don't learn much being remote. Many of my colleagues are 20 years or more younger than me and yet I learn something new every time I have deep discussions with them.
I'm lucky that my commute is 30 minutes each way. I choose to go to office at least thrice a week and a subset of my local colleagues do so too. If the commute was much longer, then I wouldn't go in as much.
There is no hope for the software industry to mature if we cannot agree on some basic coding practices. Like the judicious use of comments to improve maintainability.
I wish that were the case. I would have loved to have a more diverse pool of candidates apply. This was a mid-sized tech company (1500 employees) that is very well known in its vertical. We'd post job openings on Twitter, LinkedIn and the company website at least.
Yet the pool of US-based applicants was anything but diverse. Very few women and almost zero URM (Under-represented minorities). Also the candidate diversity was worse for more senior levels.
Maybe offer hiring bonuses to diverse candidates. Many people are secretly diverse, they just need a bit of motivation, to disclose they are non-binary or queer!
Also it is very important to respect privacy. Many people have a family, that does not know about their secret gender identity or secret sexual orientation!
Telescopes are a bit of a rabbit hole. Many cheap mass market telescopes are also known as hobby killers. A 6" dobsonian (reflector) is a good starting point for deep space objects like nebulae and star clusters. For planetary viewing Schmidt-Cassegrain telescopes are great.
However, learning to use a telescope requires time and patience. Taking it to the field for an event like this for the first time may be frustrating as you will be spending most of the time figuring out how to collimate and align it.
I certainly don't mean to discourage you from getting one though.
A good pair of binoculars is much easier to use. They require no collimation out of the box and show an upright image that makes it much easier to navigate the sky, at the cost of reduced magnification and light gathering capability. You will be surprised how many celestial objects even 10x magnification reveals that are invisible to the naked eye.
Happy planet gazing!