Oh well here goes.
back in the distant days of 2012/3 we bought our first telescope, a Celestron Nexstar 6SE, we got it from FLO who were really helpful and gave great advice . it was on at a sale price , I seem to remember.. Not long after this I got promoted which meant really extensive travel, and shortly after that I had a Heart attack in the Netherlands. The telescope sat in the cupboard and didn't get used. Once recovered I was back into the travelling to what seemed like a different country and airport every few days. I decided that it was time to take an early retirement in 2019 and then worked with the business in order to facilitate the retirement which took nearly one year. Finally the time came at the end of the fiscal year in March 2020 to take the early retirement..
My wife suggested we should now get the telescope out of the loft.
Out it came. After a few hours it was all assembled. I then tried to attach the Starsense. Released the original handset, and tried to plug in the Starsense one. After some swearing, I gave up had a coffee and set about attaching the starsense camera to the Tube. Odd the screws just go round and round , (there followed more swearing)- That will be because they are too small. After some checking on the web and indeed here, I found that they are indeed too short as suspected and that the early starsense kits, didn't have the longer screws in the pack 😒. Went back to the handset to try again and it popped on first time with no problems and no swearing.
So that was that then. Back on went the red dot finder which I couldn't line up with the scope. Sunday night arrived and we took the telescope out into the Garden with some charged batteries. There were a few stars out but we had little idea which. Eventually we managed to get one in the view finder then another , then another , then something came across the field of view moving at an amazing speed. switching to the Binoculars we caught our first sighting of the ISS, which we could confirm with an app. My word this was getting exciting. Looking at the star chart : we had no app ,we thought the big bright star was Arcturus. To be really truthful, it was amazing whatever it was. The more we looked the more we saw. It was getting darker and the whole sky was opening up to a mass of tiny lights. I had seen pictures but never anything like this. The best night sky we ever saw was in Kenya, so dark, I had never seen so many stars. Now this experience was just as inspiring and indeed very humbling - we went to bed that night like little kids....................................................
The next problem arrived, Firmware update- I was not looking forward to that at all, but with help from some guys here and once again the support of Dr Lee at David Hinds , I, had to order some cables which duly arrived a day later, thanks Celestron and Wide Screen, great service. I charged up some rechargeable batteries and we are all up to date. I then saw on the web a fix for the red dot with a little piece of cardboard - Success and no swearing. (You may have gathered by now that any kind of DIY job etc in our house is measured by the amount of swearing involved in their completion, it's a form of Parkinson's Law), - All lined up, the little cardboard trick worked. - Then another brainwave, after getting the screw dimensions for the starsense attachment from Daniel at David Hinds,:- check the Man's : it might be useful one day drawer; full of nuts ,bolts and screws - More success a pair of stainless screws which were the perfect size. The plan was to get out later that night to do the alignment with the starsense. At around 9ish we saw the Moon, lets go take a look with the telescope. try as I might I could not get the moon in the eyepiece. Off came the starsense and on went the red dot. realigned it on a telegraph pole, put the dot on the Moon and bingo! There it was - The moon in fantastic glory, I nonchalantly asked my wife if she wanted to have a look at the Moon, knowing full well that she would be amazed. Amazed she was ! We played around with different eye pieces and found the 25mm to be best for us., we just watched and watched, trying to identify craters, we lost track of time moving the telescope around looking at other stars and a few final glimpses of the Moon. The batteries were getting low and so were ours. Our second time observing and again amazing.
The Telescope eats batteries, Power supply ordered, again thanks for the advice. I hope I have put this post in the right forum and will update it with our experiences with the telescope and observing, Now it will have to be a little bit more serious, we will align the starsense and use it to get to know our way around the sky - The more we look the more we see.
Stay safe everyone and thanks for all the help, encouragement and advice.
D