first positive experience with telescope

[mikeyggg]

after a dissapointing look at jupiter last night with my newly aquired celestron 6" starhopper dob,

i took it out tonight and let it aclimatise.

i was then excited to see the mizar alcor double split into 3 stars...(mizar double i think??).

after that decided to seek out m13, which i have seen through my bino's a few times.

after much faffing around with the finder scope (taking me a while to get used to backward motion) managed to locate it with 32mm eyepiece. looked not to different that in the bins.

then swapped to 25mm eyepiece and was thrilled to see it resolving into stars round edges.

when i put the barlow on this eyepiece however, didn't get to much more detail, and brightness dropped considerably.

then tried it with 10mm and barlow.

could see a fairly dark grainy image. not enough light to see much.

does this mean the ideal eyepiece for this dob is 25mm?

tried to find m51, but no luck. never managed to locate this in bins either!

but all in all, very encouraged to see m13 so well!

[steppenwolf]

Delighted to hear that you have had a positive experience now.

[Foo Fita]

M13 was the first glob that I found, took me nearly a weak, so very well done. It will get easier with practice though (so they keep telling me. )