Early explorers, particularly by sea, relied exclusively on the night sky to help them find their way to their destination. In fact, when Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492 and discovered America, he could not have done it without astronomy and the help of navigation of the cosmos, much of which is made possible because of the important constellations. It s rather strange because the actual conduct of a serious student of astronomy is really not the stuff of high adventure. You will never see a Raiders of the Lost Arc or Jurassic Park movie made about an astronomer. Excitement for lovers of this science is to stay up all night watching the cosmos through a powerful telescope. So if you have not yet associated with a local astronomy club, now is the time to do it. Start rubbing elbows with people who live and breathe telescopes. Their input is a hundred times more reliable than what a sales brochure or that salesman might have to say because the telescope geeks have been where you are, made the mistakes and are eager to help you avoid those same mistakes. But it s an important word because the aperture of the lens is the key to how powerful your telescope is. Magnification has nothing to do with it, its all in the aperture. - Focuser is the housing that keeps the eyepiece of the telescope, or what you will look through, in place. The focuser has to be stable and in good repair for you to have an image you can rely on. First is that humans are far more visual than audio oriented. And the second is that radio astronomy doesn t really involve listening to the cosmos except to the extent that scientists who use this sophisticated form of stargazing do not rely on visual study to conduct their work. To appreciate what is really exciting about radio astronomy, first we have to shift how we view astronomy. The Night Sky No matter how far along you are in your sophistication as an amateur astronomer, there is always one fundamental moment that we all go back to. That is that very first moment that we went out where you could really see the cosmos well and you took in the night sky. For city dwellers, this is a revelation as profound as if we discovered aliens living among us.