Just came in from a quick observing session with the Celestron 6" SCT - far from ideal conditions out there tonight, very murky really and a big bank of cloud drove me back indoors after about an hour. But I got some good stuff done.

First of all, I was able to confirm that my recent clean of the corrector plate had gone well - nice sharp image, no smudges or other unmentionables. I was also able to get the GOTO all properly aligned and calibrated - last time I tried (admittedly in a real hurry) it was well off, so good to know that's all working as it should be. It is a really good setup, C6 SCT on CG-5 GOTO. Very good performance for the aperture.

In terms of actual observing - well, started with the obligatory look at Jupiter which was nice - plenty of detail on the disk, despite poor seeing. Given the rubbish sky I didn't even try any DSOs - just went round a few nice doubles. Eta Cass was great - always worth a look, nice colour contrast and very easy to resolve. Then a couple of new ones for me - Gamma and Lambda Ari. Gamma was very striking - two almost identical stars (in colour and brightness) right next to each other, like a couple of white eyes looking down at you. Lambda Ari much more widely separated, and more colour - both yellowish, with the secondary maybe a little more on the red side.

Only a short session, but some new objects for me and confirmation that I hadn't destroyed my optics when I buffed them up a bit. I'll claim that's a success!