First (popper) light

[Shecks]

Hello everyone,

First off, please excuse the length of my post

It seems that there were clear skies in many areas last night, I hope everyone had some good viewing.

I took the opertunity to make another attempt to see something after the arrival of my scope two weeks ago (The first attempt didn't really count as all I managed was a rather disturbing image of my own eyeball and some very strange glowing doughnut shapes which left me thinking that my scope had been damaged in transit ... I've since discovered that it was probably due to the very bright moon and the fact that I was looking at iluminated, out of focus, clouds)

Anyway, lastnight I decided to leave the Astrononmy Ireland scope night early and rush home to see if I could find Jupiter with my own scope. It turned out to be a good call as when I got home I discovered that the entire sky was clear and my light polluted garden is extremely dark and un-light polluted compared to where we were viewing from with AI.

The only problem was, since this was another impromptu attempt, I didn't have my finder scope aligned and just couldn't figure out how to do it with a star ... so I had to do the setup without it so ended up going with (what I thought was) the easiest method to align my scope, "solar system alignment" using Jupiter .... skip forward about 45 minutes of freezing cold, swearing, head scratching and general grumpiness ... I had Jupiter in the centre of my scope ... RESULT! (Sadly it didn't dawn on my until after I had packed everything away, I could have then aligned my finder scope .. doh!)

Although I only managed to see 3 of the Galilean moons, I could make out the bands and once I found the tiny sweet spot in the focusing range of my SCT I had some excelent views

I tried to find a few other interesting things to look at (I could see M45 without the scope but without the finder I just could not be sure I was in the right area) so spent much of my time going back to Jupiter but after a couple of hours the cold got the better of me and I decided to pack up.

All in all it was a good "first" night and I took a lot from it and learned some valuable lessons (align your finder scope first, or atleast do it when you stumble on some object you can identify. DSLRs like to be in manual mode before they will work with T-Adapters, the focus aduster on an SCT has a very wide range with a small sweet spot and needs to be found again when you change EPs)

Hopefully, if there are clear skies again tonight, I plan to get a mugshot of Jupiter

Cheers,

Shecks

[Shecks]

Typical, I missed the typo in the post title, it should be "Propper" ... any chance a mod could fix that for me?

Thanks,

Shecks

[HIP3802]

Congrats on finding Jupiter and the moons - this is one I am sure you will return to time and again. As to the finder - I would suggest alligning it during the day by focussing on a distant and stable object such as a church tower or electricity pylon and alligning the finder with the scope. Once this is done it would allignment very well for some time. This saves a lot of frustration when viewing at night.

[Double Kick Drum]

Jupiter is a great way to christen your scope and is worth going back to. Seeing conditions can vary and sometimes you can tease out a little more detail.

I am sure that once you are happy with alignment, you will begin to find more interesting objects out there.

Clear skies.

[Shecks]

Congrats on finding Jupiter and the moons - this is one I am sure you will return to time and again. As to the finder - I would suggest alligning it during the day by focussing on a distant and stable object such as a church tower or electricity pylon and alligning the finder with the scope. Once this is done it would allignment very well for some time. This saves a lot of frustration when viewing at night.

Thanks HIP3802

I've been removing the finder from the OTA when I pack everything up so it's never ready to go when there's brief gap in the clouds. I'll take your advice and once I get it aligned in daylight I will leave it attached to the scope.

As you said this should take some of the frustration out of finding stuff and hopefully help me to get better scope alignment when setting things up.

Shecks