Day one : A comedy start , at 3pm i rebuilt the tripod and telescope , this time reading the manual carefully ,(i think i was a bit excited when it first arrived )

4pm: took telescope in to garden , lined it up with the north leg facing north , I couldn’t go any further with the set up at this point because clearly it was to light to see Polaris ( the north star)The next step is to line up the finder scope and the main scope so that they are pointing at the same object . “ The Moon” I thought “easy” ………not easy at all!

5.30pm caught a glimpse of the moon in the main scope …gone again!

6pm calmed down and found the moon

10.30 moon gone now and starting to feel really tired, so I started to pack up ,

11pm finished packing up ,rolled a fat one !

11.15pm tried to send jay (the dog) outside for a wee, but he was reluctant to go .So I put my coat on and went outside with him..OMG! It was the clearest night since I had bought the scope , the weeks of waiting have come to an end .

11.30pm took telescope back in to the garden ,lined up Polaris ( much easier this time now the scopes are in line )

Now to connect up the syn scan tracking device , a system that not only tracks the stars with the earths rotation but can also find and point at objects a the touch of a button

Time for the manual ..”yep align, yep polaris, yep connection , yep plug in 12 volt power cable ..”right ok lets see , handy car power adapter , yep …….oooh ,No mains adapter ahhh mmm I cant bring my car into the back garden so I cant power it tonight then , so I turn the scope round to look at Betelguese the big red giant ( Orions left shoulder) and found that I could only take 1-2 second exposures before star streaking ,

Better prepared for next time though

Day 2

Took photos of the moon and tried to work out how to mod a webcam but the result was nothing more than a big white smudge , ill try again later .

Day3

Lol, well last night i think i worked out polar allignment , and 3 star allignment on the goto synscan computer although it wasnt by any means accurate enough for photos over 1 min all the stars look like comma's ...and after much pain from the scope lining up with the ground i realised the scope was on backwards , it seems that you need an astro physics degree for the instruction manual alone ,

oh and got loads of 12v spikes of the stand whilst looking through the finderscope must try and earth it next time , still a good evening although short due to cloud cover , and i saw there is loads of **** happening but missed it all with the camera,

BUT IM READY NOW! so bring on the next clear night