This article is for reflector type telescopes as I have and am only comfortable servicing my Dobsonian.

With lens's if it is only dust on the lens surface itself try blowing lightly on the lens, if no joy a camera blower brush is the next step blowing across the face of the lens the same way you would with a camera lens. If the mark still persists, try cleaning the lens with

Light Pollution Problem

I was reading in ‘The Sun’ news paper (which we receive a couple of times a year – but that’s a delivery problem) that a Cairns company has developed a wrap-around skin for low power ‘light poles’ with imbedded photo voltaic's as an earth friendly way to generate ‘clean’ power and good for them, well done!

Our electricity distribution people have suggested that they will wait a year to see how it goes (very admirable) considering that in our end of Cambridge Street, Gulliver alone there are no less than thirty (30) street lights in around 1km and by their own admission there are millions of the things throughout the country, a fact that any ‘lover’ of the heavens knows only too well.

These lights are all unshielded lights with only a small amount of their radiated light doing the job they were supposedly designed to do, the rest is scattered in every direction including up.  Now we get to my point as a ‘stargazer’ or amateur astronomer hopeful!

Folks, we have lost our beautiful skies.  There is no longer a lovely ‘Milky Way’ above our cities and large towns.  If we have lights to light up our streets