In late 1997 there was a post in the usenet group Sci.Astro.Amateur asking for people to finish this phrase...

You know you're a Deep Sky Observer when...

• You consider the moon a major annoyance.
• You consider Jupiter 'light pollution.'
• You consider meteors 'light pollution'.
• You consider the milky way 'light pollution.'
• You contemplate ways of destroying the Earth because it's in the way.
• You pack Dry Ice around your head to reduce the "noise" from your retina and optic nerve.
• You refuse to use the ladder with your 20" f/6 at the Winter Star Party stating, "If I use that, the objects are too far north."
• You consider the H-II regions of distant galaxies as individual observing targets.
• You spend most of your time looking at or for objects you can barely see.
• Your favorite objects are objects you can barely see.
• You enjoy looking at faint fuzzies with the smallest possible aperture.
• You enjoy looking at faint fuzzies with the largest possible aperture.
• You like to choose objects that are easier to imagine than to see.
• Your observing schedule demands that you search for objects in twilight.
• You wonder how your favorite objects missed getting included in the New General Catalog or the Index Catalog.
• You're not sure that anything in this solar system counts as Astronomy any more.
• You're amazed that anyone needs artificial light to read charts.
• You could do a Messier Marathon from memory, if you still bothered with Messier objects.
• You can read all the NGC abbreviated visual descriptions without using the key, but you have to be careful not to cheat by just remembering what things look like.
• You view a major earthquake as an opportunity for a close-in dark-sky star party.
• You are attending a major star party (guess which one), and you ask the organizers to turn down the Milky Way.
• You believe M13 ruined your dark adaptation.
• You welcome (and have even considered instigating) power cuts, but only if they occur on clear moonless nights.
• You observe M42 at the end of the sessions because it DOES ruin dark adaptation!
• Your choice of a new vehicle is determined by the size of your scope.
• Vacation time is planned around the Winter and Texas (or other) Star Parties.
• Arp is not a funny sound, but the name of one of your favorite galaxy catalogues.
• You challenge friends by saying, "Lets do something stupid" as you hunt for deep sky objects on a lazy, full-moon night because you are faint-photon starved.
• You find auroras a complete annoyance because they ruin sky contrast and dark adaptation.
• You memorize the NGC catalog and can recite type and magnitude off the top of your head when asked "What is a NGC 1000?"
• Your ideal site would require oxygen.
• Your ideal vacation would be in Namibia, but...
• Your ideal telescope would be immovable.
• You prep your eyes by applying pupil dilating drops until they open to 10mm.
• You travel to Australia to read your star charts by the light of the Milky Way.
• You plan a two month trip to Australia and spend all of it in the middle of the continent trying to find every southern DSO.
• Instead of vitamins you take billberry pills.
• You actually know where to get billberry jam, and make a point of consuming some prior to observing sessions.
• You'd rather observe than go on a hot date.
• For some reason you're always depressed when that time of the month (full moon) occurs.
• In preparation for another DSO bout, you carefully massage your eyes to make sure all your rods are discharged.
• You pay $3500 for a pupil enlargement operation even though you own a 1 meter light bucket
• You complain you can't really see the faint stuff because the Gegenschein is too bright.
• You consider how to blow up the SUN in order to reduce light pollution.
• While spot checking the collimation of your dob, you note that with concentration you can just begin to detect spiral structure in the dust coating your primary.
• You take deep-sky pictures during a total eclipse of the moon.
• You bitch about severe light pollution when the limiting magnitude is "only" 6.5.
• You actually know how to USE setting circles.
• You have NO use for setting circles. Star hopping to an 18th mag. smudge is a breeze.
• You actually USE 'Uranometria,' and can quote page numbers.
• You frequently disagree with Burnhams, and have seriously considered publishing your OWN "observer's guide."
• You see absolutely no value in using a Telrad.
• Your principal finder scope is larger than 80mm.
• You consider 15 minutes to be a 'quick' exposure.
• You see more DSOs on your laptop screen during an evenings' observing session than you do through the eyepiece.
• You have seriously considered starting up your own anti-satellite lobby.
• You have blackened the edges of your eyeglasses.
• You are briefly taken aback by the brightness of a normal flashlight under "normal flashlight" circumstances (power outages, e.g.).
• You hire a crop duster to spray the surrounding area because last night the fire flies kept ruining your dark adaptation.
• You think GM's Daytime Running Lights are some kind of evil alien scheme.
• You can make ten trips lugging equipment back and forth across a cow pasture without stepping on a single cow pie, using only the illumination of that garishly bright Milky Way to guide you.
• You wear sun screen during full moon periods.
• You wear sun glasses during full moon periods.
• You wear red sunglasses all day in preparation for viewing that night.
• You've been thinking that a 14th century black monk's hood is a pretty cool idea.
• Night lights are a nuisance in your house.
• You wear an eye patch during the viewing session.
• The dome light of your car is painted red.
• You paint the LED's on your equipment with red fingernail polish so that they are dimmer.
• You begin to realize that even the deepest red flash light is affecting your vision.
• You remove the LED on your drive control panel, because THAT ruins your dark adaptation.
• You use an infrared flashlight.
• You keep thinking that if only the stars would go away, it might really get dark.
• You always set your scope up so that you can't move your car until daylight.
• You bring a gallon of coffee (or 12 pack of Diet Coke) to the viewing session. If the caffeine doesn't keep you awake the urge to "go" does.
• You keep a cross-index of stuff that you have looked at on 3x5 file cards organized by object catalog number, so you can easily find your logged observations of any specific object.
• You have elective surgery to replace your eye's natural lenses with f/0.8, oil-spaced, apochromatic triplet objectives designed by Roland Christensen.
• You think about how to smash the nearby street light without getting caught.
• You think about how much the penalty would be for smashing the nearby street lamp.
• You're caught by the police climbing light poles at night trying to "unscrew" the bulbs.
• You ask your neighbors over to star gaze, so they will know to turn out their porch lights.
• You complain you can't really see the faint stuff because the Zodiacal Light is too bright.
• You can talk with a red flashlight in your mouth.
• You can actually understand someone talking with a red flashlight in THEIR mouth!
• You get a "DSO" tattoo on your arm.
• You name your kids after deep sky objects.
• In order to provide better spousal communication, you buy your wife a light bucket and compare notes.
• Your wife places a picture of herself in your favorite star atlas, to remind you of what she looks like.
• Your spouse is wearing a sexy evening garment with wine glasses in hand and you want to stay outside in -10 degree temperatures to catch a few more NGC's.
• You get red contacts made 'cuz the red goggles have been letting too much white light.
• You glue glow-in-the-dark M-objects on your living room ceiling for practice observing during overcast evenings.
• When the sequence "OBAFGKM" feels more natural than "ABCDEF..."
• You plan your trips past the Arctic/Antarctic Circle to coincide with the appropriate solstice.
• You look forward to that time of the night when certain edge-on spirals pose at 45 degrees.
• You pour those Cheerios for breakfast at 6:00am in the morning only to realize you haven't been to bed yet.
• You refer to your Cheerios breakfast as "my bowl full of M57's.
• You start looking for the central star in one of your Cheerios... and you see it.
• You drive to the observing site in a Ford Galaxy... whose license plate number starts with "NGC"
• You can make observations of mag 18 galaxies from your driveway with your favorite Tasco 50 mm refractor!
• you see the letters "sex" and your first thought is of the constellation sextans!
• You look forward to that time of night (year) when the Milky Way goes all the way around the horizon.
• Find an 8" F6 with a really good primary and think "This will make a nice finder on my big DOB."
• You just finished a 30 minute exposure and realize that you never cocked the shutter.
• You drive 130 miles to a remote site in pouring rain and sit there all night hoping it will clear.
• You have learned to judge your dark adaptation (and the quality of the dark site) by how good M-13 (or some other big, bright DSO) looks naked eye.
• You have learned to judge your dark adaptation (and the quality of the dark site) by how good M-33 (or some other big, low surface brightness DSO) looks naked eye.
• You try to convince the "shallow sky observers" that comets and asteroids are much more interesting than planets.
• Your collection of astrophotos weighs more than you.
• Your collection of disks of CCD photos weighs more than you.
• You can point out the locations of deep sky objects, in broad daylight.
• You have considered making mega - binoculars out of two 10" scopes.
• You have considered buying nearby real estate in order to demolish it.
• You believe telescopes should qualify for religious tax exemptions.
• You regard sky charts as 'Ancient history' books.
• You gave up smoking not for health reasons but because it ruined your night vision.
• You have considered moving to another hemisphere to see some new sights.
• You get O-III Filter contact lenses
• You can see planetary nebulae in other galaxies... without an O-III filter.
• You know the magnification & FOV of all your eyepieces in every telescope ever made.
• You divorce your wife because she's "too distracting" at night.
• You have replaced your eyes with that of a cat... and still use night-vision equipment on your scope.
• You are saving to put your own telescope in space.
• You've memorized the Palomar Sky-survey because "its good as a finder-chart."
• You have a 16"-telescope... as a finder.
• You were too busy at night to have made children.
• You try to use gravitationally bended light to view distant objects.
• You can visually identify the redshift of quasars.
• You try to view galaxies... through the spiral-arms of other galaxies.
• You make your own filters.
• You make your own eyepieces.
• You live in the desert, but only at night.
• You don't have a CCD-camera because the PC-screen ruined your adaptation, and "it looked better visually anyway."
• You can find more than 10 non-NGC objects... without looking through the scope.
• You find 17th-mag. stars "annoyingly bright."
• You think you can see the Hubble-Deep-Field... without a telescope.
• Your eyes only contain rods.
• Your pupils are always larger than 7mm.
• You've painted yourself black to avoid reflections.
• You've painted everything in a 100-mile radius black to avoid reflections.
• You're dreaming about painting the whole world black.
• A mirror with 95%-reflectivity is "not good enough."
• You cool your surroundings with liquid nitrogen to avoid thermal uprising.
• You're making a suit to cool yourSELF with too.
• You have to use sunglasses when viewing objects brighter than 15th magnitude.
• You have forgotten what the world looks like during the day.
• You have forgotten what the world looks like at night, 'cause you're always looking up.
• You know the periods of extra-galactic Cepheid variable stars... from experience.
• You have found several comets, but you're too busy observing to report them.
• You have reported several comets, but they're too faint too see by anybody else, so they don't believe you.
• You go to bed if naked-eye visibility is worse than 7th mag.
• You claim to have seen Stephan's Quintet without a telescope.
• You find Pluto too bright to view with a 4-inch.
• You've become so nearsighted (by squinting), that you no longer need eyepieces.
• You've coated your eyes so that they're anti-reflective.
• You only look at objects when they're at most 5 degrees from the zenith.
• You can accurately track objects with your DOB at 700-times magnification... with one finger.
• You have a voice-controlled dome so you don't have to leave the telescope.
• You have trained your bladder to hold it for up to 18 hours on those long arctic winter nights.
• You think the telescope is part of the family.