First successful session

[Moon monkey]

Well last night I had my first successful session with my new scope. I have the 8” imaging Newtonian from Altair Astro on an EQ5 pro goto mount. This is an F4 scope and I was using a 15mm EP with a 2X Barlow.

Ps. I am very new to all this, so please be patient

I have had the scope out on several occasions and on each occasion I have had one problem or another..just some of the problems I’ve had include... entering the coordinates wrong, entering the date wrong, and not polar aligning correctly

However last night I got it right... I did a 2 star alignment, and then asked my mount to take me to the moon and off to the moon I went ... yayyy. Totally blown away is all I can say... the detail really took my breath away. I then decided to take a tour using the hand control. First on the tour was the Bee Hive Cluster which the mount found without problem, I did have to centre it a bit. Next I skipped a few suggestions as I really wanted to see a galaxy... however I didn’t see any I think with the bright moon and my neighbours bathroom light on it was just not dark enough.. What happened next I will never forget. The tour next went to the Ring Nebula so I pressed the button and of my scope went, when it stopped I looked through the EP..... and Nothing... however I then decided to have a little look around, first up then down then left then.... hang on what the.... OMG the Ring Nebula right there from my back garden... 2300 Light years away now I am hooked :hello2:I must have looked at it for 1/2 hour whilst my mount tracked without fault. To me at first it just looked a bit gray but the more I looked the more I could see, and I’m sure it was a faint greenish colour. After this I decided to tell my mount to point to Saturn, this it did but just missed by a fraction, guess I still have to tweak my setup.. I could see Saturn and 3 of its moons, I could just about make out the division in the rings but don’t think it was a great night to look in fine detail as Saturn seemed to keep going in and out of focus ? I put this down to turbulence up above ?

At the end of the night long after the mrs had gone to bed I packed up after what I consider a very successful night.

And I will always have a soft spot for the Ring Nebula now.... It was my first

[swamp thing]

Nice report.

Glad you had a good first session.

Regards Steve

[Astro Imp]

Great report.

Glad you had a good time, first of many.

[jmr.6@att.net]

Very good report!