First light! Skywatcher 150p :)

[Dave7a]

After reading much talk of 'long delivery times' and 'increased demand exhausting stock levels' , I began to doubt whether the scope I'd got my eye on would still be around in 2 weeks time when I had planned to buy it for Josh's birthday. So.....I took the plunge and bought it today instead!

I got a great deal from the Camera Centre in Burnley and managed to crawl through the rush-hour traffic with 10 minutes to spare before closing time. Josh and I both sat looking at the boxes like two kids when I got it home. I think he can still get away with that description, being nearly 11, but I'm stretching it a bit at 42 and 3/4.

After discussing the fact that one of the boxes had already been opened, we both decided it would be extremely unwise to wait 14 days to inspect the scope for delivery damage, missing parts, you know....that kind of thing? So we agreed our only logical option was to assemble it imediately and make sure everything was ok.

30mins later we were out the back with the 25mm EP in, eager for the sky to darken. We couldn't see any distant objects to setup the finder so I decided to use to moon. I clumsily panned around getting used to the way the image moves and was stunned as I stumbled across it. It looked fantastic!! We were so excited at how much detail we could see! I wrestled him away from the scope while I did a rough

setup of the finder and then handed it back to him. He pointed it immediately over in the direction of Jupiter, got on the finder, then looked through the EP. "DAD!! I can see it!! Wow! I can see the bands!! DAD!!! I can see the moons around Jupiter!!"

I was totally amazed at the view before us. To look up at the sky and see a bright dot and know that that is Jupiter is one thing, but to look through a scope and see the planet, in some detail, with some moons orbiting around it ( we saw 3!), from where you're standing, in your back yard....well that's just something else altogether!!!

His next target was the Orion Nebula. What had been a faint smudge in the bins was now a wonderful whispy cloud! After looking at it for about 15 mins, more and more detail seemed to appear. Whether that was due to the somewhat light sky darkening a little as time went by I don't know but it was mind blowing for us both.

Venus appeared to be a bright ball, until Josh pointed out it was lit up on the left, and shadowed on the right. And I think he was right!

Then he says "how do we put a camera on this Dad? We've got to get pictures of this!" "Hmmm... Leave that one with me...!" (£3.50 Xbox Live Cam ordered from Amazon this evening )

What a brilliant experience. Hopefully to be repeated time and again for many years to come, with a little luck and some clear skies.

Happy days indeed

Dave, Josh, and our new looking glass

[Black Knight]

That's a great first light report. First look at Jupiter has to be one of the best experiences, although wait till you see Saturns rings! Beautiful!