What is it like to use a telescope?
It takes hard work, long hours, and is probably the most enjoyable part of the whole job! A solar astronomer needs to be at the telescope from sunrise until sunset. A nighttime astronomer is just the opposite, arriving at the telescope late in the afternoon to prepare for the night’s observations and working until dawn. A typical observing run is 4-6 days in length, during which time the astronomer eats, sleeps, and “lives on the mountain”, for example, on Kitt Peak. Astronomers rarely look through the telescope eyepiece anymore. These days, an electronic instrument such as a CCD (similar to what is in a video camcorder) is mounted on the telescope and transfers the data back to a computer monitor in a (heated) control room, which can be in the same building as the telescope, or many miles away in a “remote observing” situation.
