here is how it all began earlier tonight

it has been a real juggling mission ensuring the wife sleeps as its her turn, the baby feeds, changes etc and also sleeps and i get outside, still at the time not knowing if i could get this "broken" mount to work - turns out i was broken

Attempt 1 - in sheer excitement (i had a great feeling it would work) i carted it all outside, got everything set up (or so i thought) set the scope to north and to zero digs and then fired it up - i chose vega as 1st star of the 2 star alignment, looked through the finderscope got it dead centre and hit enter, found Spica as star 2 in my finder - immediately realised that it HAD worked and i needed to make a tiny adjustment.

so excited at that point, i then looked through my 25mm lens and saw NOTHING at all, couldn't focus on anything at all.. tried the 10mm - nothing

panic set in - i assumed the second mirror has dissolved or something far worse, fallen and cracked the primary mirror - it took me about 2 full minutes to realise that the CAP was on still and the tube was not extended !!!!!! in other words i took the cap off the end, but thats it... idiot boy.

Attempt 2 - even more excited now i knew it worked i followed the same star aligns.... i then put Saturn in and off it slewed... nothing - i worked this 1 out quickly. I had simply knocked the finder scope miles away so i lined it up and went for attempt 3.

Baby starts to cry, ran in fed at a million miles an hour praying for no clouds or worse wet equipment from the non existent rain.

20 mins later attempt 3

Attempt 3 - finally there was Saturn, looking great - I'm still not sure about the collimation but it shouldn't matter when i get the replacement scope. now id seen saturn before - but it somehow looked better - knowing that it wouldn't shoot out of view i sat and marvelled.

finally i punched in the ring nebula - until this point i had never ever seen any messieurs (in fact anything more than our moon and a few planets)

wow - ok not really clear - had to use averted vision, no real colour to it just an averted ring - i hope that collimation on the new scope will resolve it better.

i must have put in 15 different messiers, double closers etc in about 1 minute after that and impatiently waited... then m92 ! it looked as good as the pictures you can see online - just smaller as it was just my eye picking it up and not a camera - m92 - wow !!!!!!

and thats the end of my night - i am going to sleep happy now. i know now that once the new scope arrives undented i can put it on my mount and just go for it - but collimated - i still need help please anyone local feeling generous for a pint or 2 haha

clear skies all