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Remote Telescope Operation (1 August 2009)   Many of you who are reading this page may be in similar circumstances to me -- (though retired twice before,) I'm working a full-time day job, living in a family of five with three active young children, and involved in some community activities several evenings a month. Does this make me tired during the evening? You bet! During the first several years after I bought my telescope, I would find that what little time was available to observe was spent in hauling the 135 lb "portable telescope" in an out of the house, setting it up on the tripod, spending some time aligning the scope, and then enjoying the views for only a little while before I fell asleep on my feet.   Wishing to avoid this setup and breakdown time was the main motivation for building a permanent observatory for the telescope. Having the telescope ready to observe in only 5 minutes is really wonderful, and it gives me back considerably more time for observing, but it doesn't do much for that feeling of tiredness. You can go to the page about building the observatory to see what fun I had in constructing BrightSkies Observatory.   Although it is not my intention to ...