At our March meeting, Jeff Phillips will talk about how to buy a used telescope. About his talk, Jeff writes: “You may have heard the news that Meade Telescopes and Orion Telescopes have gone out of business. Most new telescopes these days including Celestron telescopes are actually made in China. And as you know there is talk of increasing the import tax, AKA tariffs, on everything imported from China. So it may not be the best of times to be buying a new telescope.

“What can you do? It turns out that a lot of astronomy buffs are old guys like me; I just turned 75. So there are a lot of used telescopes for sale on places like Craigslist or Cloudy Nights Classifieds. In fact almost every scope I own was purchased second hand. So I thought I’d share a few pointers. How to buy a used scope, what to look for and what to look out for. And I’ll talk about how to research your choices before you plunk down your cash.”

At this meeting we’ll also continue our tradition of giving away an Astroscan telescope from the several that were donated to the club last fall. You must be a club member in good standing (i.e. an applica- tion on file and dues paid) in order to enter the drawing.

The meeting is at 7:00 on Thursday, March 20th at the Eugene Science Center planetarium, 2300 Leo Harris Parkway in Eugene (behind Autzen Stadium). Note that the west entrance off Martin Luther King Blvd. is closed, so you have to go around to the east entrance. If you’re arriving from the west, go past the light at Kinsrow and turn right on Leo Harris Parkway. The new parking lot is open now; the entrance is at the very end of the remaining section of Leo Harris Parkway.