A Perspective by Chris Penberthy

Lu and I arrived at about 10:30, visited the Info desk where we collected our Scope-X 2003 sweatshirts and then decided to do a quick dash around the exhibitors before starting our own stint/tour of duty on said Info desk.

There seemed to be a lot more on view in the grounds this year, and a fair amount of thought must have gone into some of the exhibits. We didn't get to see anyone sweating away at the mirror-grinding demo - I guess they also needed a bit of a break! Some nice looking scopes both commercial and homemade were dotted about - some of the latter quite impressive and obviously "created" with a lot of sweat and tears. We were suitably impressed with one that had a round wooden tube made of individual strips of wood - a beautiful 'scope this. Eventually we made our way to Bruce's setup with that great 12" LX200 (under cover) and a smaller ETX out in to open and tracking the Sun. We peeked through the 'scope and viewed a couple of Sunspots one of which was quite sizable. Lu's comment - "hmmm Bruce - looks like some dirt on your lens".

I snapped a few images as we went around including one of our colleagues from North of the Jukskei - always nice to see them. As time was not too plentiful, we had to make a dash for the Info desk where we had to take over at 11:00. On the way, we saw a Mirror making machine - quite interesting.

After a busy(ish) 2 hours, we handed over to our successors and had quick look at the exhibits we'd missed on the first tour - stopping off at Dave Hughes' Dob. Also trained on the Sun (and guess what - the same speck of dirt on the lens ). Those Sunspots are very interesting and we speculated on their sizes relative to the Earth.

Our son and daughter-in-law arrived and after they signed up to join the society we took another cruise around the exhibitors. This time we had a look at those inside the hall as well - a pity commercial 'scopes are still so darned expensive - they really do make it easy for the amateur but at a hefty price of course!

We also had an interesting chat to Emmanuel Petrakakis from Mozambique who runs a small hotel and restaurant on the coast and also has a small farm suitable for viewing. Maybe we should organise a visit where we can do Scuba diving during the day and view the stars at night (and sleep when we get back to Gauteng!!!)

All-in-all a really good effort - I think overall it was better than last year - but without detracting from the excellence of our first Scope-X.