stupid mistakes ><

[fizzpup]

spend the better part of an hour looking for m13 last night then realised i was looking at the square at the bottom of draco not hercules

DOH!

[fizzpup]

anyone else had any equally daft things, on the plus side i suppose got some beautiful views of andromeda, double cluster and the dumbell nebula so night wasn't totally wasted.

[Carbon Brush]

Daftest one for me was shortly after buying a 2nd hand CG5 (goto) mount.

First night out I couldn't work out why it was forever looking in the wrong places. So I gave up and used tried and trusted methods.

The next day while 'fault finding' the mount indoors in daylight,the dohh moment.

The CG5 requires a date in US, not UK format when setting up.

My other kit uses date in UK format and has battery backup for the clock.

[Stephen]

Forgetting to take the Bahtinov mask off - I wish I could say I've only made that mistake once!

[Budgie]

Yep, been there with my EQ5.

Although I got the day right, I forgot to change the month so things were sort of in the right place but a month out.

[John]

I recently left the translucent lens cap on the 1.25" barrel of my 13mm Tele Vue Ethos (which has a hybrid 2" / 1.25" barrel arrangement). I didn't notice the cap because I was using the eyepiece in a 2" focuser. The weird thing was that I could still get some resolution on the Moon with the cap in place - but I did think the seeing had deteriorated drastically within the space of a few seconds - until the penny dropped

[cantab]

Thinking the asterism of Alpha, Beta, and Delta Persei was Triangulum.