Hello

[JamesM]

Hi Colin and welcome to the forum. Yes the observatory idea is a good one if you have the room or have access to dark skies - look forward to reading about your progress concerning that endeavour! 

Clear skies and enjoy the forum

[Colinlp]

An observatory is 100% essential to me, I never plan ahead and I'm a lazy sod at best so dragging the scope out and putting it away after is a sure fire way to not use it. That's part of the reason I stopped last time, along with some other stuff which took up a lot of time and just made it difficult.

Interestingly, for me anyway; one of the replies on this thread was from one of my best friends at school who I haven't seen in 38 years. I'm thrilled to bits about that, small world eh? Then again in the scale of the stuff we are all here to observe it's amazing we haven't been tripping up over each other all that time. It's largely from that friendship and that of an excellent school teacher that my interest in astronomy stems.

Well it's a clear night and the new scope is set up in readiness for darkness to fall

[damnut]

Cloudy Here Col! My favourite scope ever my 10" Lx200...Love big sct's.

[Bizibilder]

Hello Colin and welcome to SGL!!

[purdo]

Hi Colin & Welcome to SGL.

[Colinlp]

Well, had first light on the Celestron last night, a tiny bit of cloud but the seeing was good. First nights are always a bit of a play aren't they   Got used to the scope control, had a bit of a problem with the GPS initially, it wouldn't connect, RTFM - switch GPS on! But the buttons on my hand set are different to the ones in the manual slightly, there's one with a Celestron logo on it, no idea what it does yet, that's for another night. Very impressed with the ease of set up, let GPS do the location/time then just line the scope up with any three bright stars, any stars and hit align, job done. After that the scope centres on any object faultlessly, it tracks OK too, the longest I observed an object was about ten minutes and it was still centred with no visible drift.

One complaint, well not really a complaint I think it's a necessity, the scope sometimes can slew on the azimuth say 350 degrees anticlockwise rather than going 10 degrees clockwise which I guess is programmed in to avoid cable issues but in doing that it pulled the power cable out, I'll know better next time.

What did I look at, well everything it seems Started off with Venus as I was impatient to get going and it wasn't properly dark, Venus was bright in my old 8" Newt but it was unbearable with the 11", I'll get better organised next time and make sure I can get at my filters easily. Then Jupiter, awesome as I remember and was very clear through a 13mm EP, I didn't bother going any higher. The rest of the night I played with the "Tour" facility on the handset and used either a 34mm or 40mm EP. What can you say about the Tour? It's just excellent stuff overload! Press the button and bang there's another galaxy dead centre, lots of things I never managed to find before all there at the press of a button, I have mixed feelings about that but impressive none the less.

So fingers crossed, the Celestron looks like being OK, just need to get myself back up to speed, it's amazing what you forget after a long break.

Favourite view of the night: M51, stunning!

Thanks for the welcome everyone, time to venture out into the rest of the forum now and ask a lot of daft questions

[Charon]

Welcome aboard.

[Stropper]

Hi and welcome

[damnut]

Great first light Colin, remember to post in the obsy threads.

[Colinlp]

Great first light Colin, remember to post in the obsy threads.

Haven't changed much have you!!

Will do Mr D

[glowjet]

Hi Colin and welcome to SGL, nice first light report, with a very nice scope. Press on with that obsy, then you will have a place to permanently house it. There are many past obsy constructions for you to look at on the forum for ideas, enjoy

[HIP3802]

Hi, Colin, and a warm welcome to SGL!