The long road starts here...

[Steep]

Got home from work at 10 to see unbelievably lovely clear skies, so I rushed inside to fit the spanking new Orion right angle finder* to the almost as spanking new 10" dob and rushed it all outside. A few minutes aligning the finder and I was away! I've seen Jupiter many times in the 127Mak but it was so blindingly bright tonight it hurt, only 3 moons visible but the patterning on the surface was plain to see. Shift along to the Pleiades with the supplied 30mm and I couldn't recognise it for all the stars visible

This is all well and good I thought but I bought the Dob to see Nebulae so since Orion was right up there (and in my mind anyway) I lined up on M42, it's an easy one and I've seen it in the Mak faintly but tonight it was just wow! so much so that I went to get my 80+ year old neighbours who have been on at me to have a look through my telescope and gave them a thrill. Half an hour or so later the sky started hazing over and I decided to give it a rest, partly also as the wind tonight has been gusting fiercely and it's been difficult keeping the scope on target.

*A warning! when fitting your new finder do not just hand tighten the thumb screw holding it to the mount! when taking the scope down for the night the finder fell off the ota and came apart on hitting the concrete path, heart in mouth time until I made sure it was ok - very very lucky I think.

Per the title, the long road starts here, the first step being M42 and many more to come, I wish I'd bought the Dob years ago.

[Qualia]

Sounds like a great session and I hope the neighbours enjoyed what was shown. M 42 in my little 4" is like some cosmic swan-bird adorned with bright, pin-point jewels, so I can only begin to imagine what it was like in your 8". A most glorious sight. Have you tried tweaking out the stars of Trapezium? The last entry I made of M 42 / M 43 was back on the 12th and curiously I managed to spot the F component but not E

With Jupiter I have found that using a light, pale blue filter (#80a) really helps if too bright and is excellent for tweaking out details. Today I've received as a gift a light yellow filter (#11) but alas for this season I'm saying my last good byes to the giant, for by the time I can begin my evening's session the planet is already too far west to really appreciate.

I'm sorry to hear about the little accident and I hope the finder is still in good shape. I thumb screw mine onto the frac at the beginning of each section, balance the scope and go over all the screws for the dove tail, diagonal, and finder once again. When finished for the night, I re-position the scope as I would when Polar aligning and strip down the OTA: EP, diagonal, finder etc. Only then do I left the scope from the mount. Touch wood, I haven't had any problems.

Here's a couple of sketches I made of M 42 / M43 and the Trapezium a couple of weeks ago. Jupiter is also included sketched with filter:

(P.S: Sorry about the lighting of the photo shot, but I live by candels...only kidding )

[Steep]

Thanks for that, I double checked this morning and the finder is ok. I don't think I'll ever have the patience to take notes and draw my observations as you do but I'll need to keep some sort of record for future reference.

[swamp thing]

Congrats on the new scope. A 10" Dob is a pretty good tool for nebula observing. It's no slouch when it comes to Galaxies and globs either

[Luke]

I love my ten inch dob. A nice balance between size, aperture, weight, low hassle and price.