Rediscovered Visual Observing!

[BlueAstra]

After much agonizing I decided I had to sell my Nexstar 8se to help fund my new fast Newtonian (delivery May ). It helped that there is a chap at work who is interested in buying it, so tonight I dug out the boxed tripod and Alt-Az head (hardly ever used, the SCT goes on my EQ6) to give it a work out. All went together very quickly and was soon ready to do a star alignment with the handset. Did a quick 2 star alignment, visually centering the stars, and I was ready to observe. All this in a fraction of the time it takes me to setup the 'serious' imaging rig. I had a look at some clusters, Mars, jupiter, and finally the Moon. What a revelation that was! The craters were pin sharp and I just wandered over the surface for ages, trying different combinations of eyepiece and barlow. All in all a really enjoyable evening, reminding me of the early days before imaging took hold. So, to all you dedicated imagers out there, take a break, dust the cobwebs off those eyepieces, and spend an evening just looking. I'm sure you'll enjoy it just as much as I did!