November 8, 2025

A magnificent view of the Moon, with the 76 DCU.

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As I've chronicled in these pages for nearly a decade (!), autumn is my favorite time to observe the heavens here in Washington, DC. The air is crisp, the mosquitoes are scarce (usually), the wildfire smoke has abated, and the atmosphere is often quite steady. Unfortunately, I haven't had much time to observe this autumn - I'll explain why in a minute - but recently I did have a chance to catch a glimpse of the waxing gibbous Moon. 

Better yet, I caught that glimpse with a brand new telescope: a Takahashi FC76 DCU. A few weeks ago, I decided to sell my workhorse, a telescope I've long praised in these pages: the Takahashi FC100DZ. It was a tough call, but my TSA 120 is light enough and, to my surprise, cools down quickly enough to make the 100DZ a little superfluous. At night, I often asked myself: why would I use the four-inch refractor - the DZ - when I could use a five-inch (the TSA) instead and get a slightly better view? 

Enter the little 76 DCU. It's that much lighter than the DZ, making it so easy to carry that I scarcely feel it - even with a diagonal attached. It doesn't have a sliding dew shield, which would be a drawback if it were a little bigger. But for a three-inch refractor, the slight reduction in setup time is a blessing. 

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The Moon is a perfect first target for a small refractor, and wow, the 76DCU did not disappoint. Of course, it doesn't quite permit the magnifications I reached with my 100DZ, but otherwise I couldn't notice much difference. As the video and pictures attest, the view was absolutely sharp, almost entirely color-free, and just everything you want from a little telescope.

It was a night of above-average atmospheric seeing and transparency. And I'm not sure I could have seen that much more of the Moon with any telescope that I own or have owned. Part of the reason may be that, alas, I no longer have 20/20 vision. But that's an interesting thought for an amateur astronomer.

I've long thought that an optical system is only as good as its worst component. If you plug a $20 eyepiece into a $20,000 telescope, you'll see what that cheap eyepiece allows you to see. Okay, maybe that's a slight exaggeration, but it's not much of one, and of course it also applies to the eye itself. If my eye is, say, only a little better than average, then will an exquisite telescope - one that weighs almost as much as I do (with mount and tripod) and takes a while to set up - really show me that much more than a really good one?

​Probably not. 

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So yes, the 76 DCU is a wonderful telescope, and it may well be better for my purposes than the 100DZ. When paired with the TSA 120, it should give me a wonderful one-two punch for urban observing. 

And why have I been busy lately? My new book! Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean, a book that shows how the solar system mattered in human history, made its debut about a week ago. From doing a Reddit AMA (my first!) to writing a series of articles about everything from solar storms to Martian canals, it's been a hectic stretch. I also completed a heap of interviews, including this one for the Planetary Report, my favorite space podcast.

On top of that, I created six short videos to introduce the book - its big arguments, the evidence I use, the methods I follow, and why it all matters. You can start watching them right here. 

It's funny: I started writing this little blog because I wanted to remember the things I saw under the night sky. But the more I saw, the more it shaped how I wrote Ripples, and the more people I reached through this blog. Ripples and AstroJournals.com now feel like two sides of the same coin - the coin of the profound connection I and so many others feel to our cosmic environment.