The story doesn't really start here, but I expect this is gong to be a common theme. It's cloudy.

It's cloudy because today I decided to get rid of the red dot finder that came with my baby telescope. It's cloudy because I stuck my Telrad finder on in its place, spent a good 15 minutes making sure it was calibrated properly, and spent a further 20 minutes fashioning a homebodged dew shield for it out of a sheet of plastic.

The Clear Outside forecast had been promising no cloud from 9pm and a six hour window, but by the time I had finished my Blue Peter job on the dew shield, this had slipped back to 11. Then midnight. The window had shrunk to two hours, and the dew risk from green to red. In the end the colours were changing so quickly I had a flashback to my first school disco...

I managed to get out on Thursday night for my first proper sky hunting session, but dew managed to draw that to a close before I was ready for it to end. Newtonians don't need dew shields, said every source of information I could find but there was enough dew on the primary mirror to go swimming in. So I've fashioned a dew shield for the scope as well, out of an old camping roll mat. I was so ready for that six hour window...