Third day of observation

[msacco]

So yesterday my brother and his friends went to a small site to watch the perseid meteor shower, and I decided to go with them and use my telescope. It wasn't a really dark spot, but it was ok, because I don't have a portable 12v power supply yet, I had to use my EQ5 goto manually with my SkyWatcher 200p(I don't have slow motion cables, so I had to use OTA), and because lack of time, I didn't even do polar align(I still don't think I completely know how to do it tbh).

People told me that my collimation might be off, so before I went out I tried doing it myself(I have no cheshire or anything similar), I think I did it kinda fine, but I don't really know..

So after setting up everything, I started with mars, it looked better than before after the collimation, I could see a bit of color with my 10mm eyepiece which was nice, then I moved to saturn for the first time, and that was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen, the colors were so good, the rings were so sharp, I was simply amazed. I wanted to buy a telescope that will be good enough to see the planets well, and also some DSO etc, and I was never happier with a purchase, in all the "what you should really expect" threads I saw pictures, and they were kinda nice, but what I've seen was so much better than everything I expected, I started with the 25mm eyepiece, and then added the 2x barlow with the 10mm eyepiece, and it was even more beautiful than before. The peak was when I used my 3.6mm eyepiece with the 2x barlow, it was so colorful and amazing, but it was so hard to keep track of it because I had no goto controller/slow motion cables and no polar align. The place we went to was to crowdy, everyone just came up to me and wanted to look through the telescope, some asked me a lot of questions(as if Im an expert), and some didn't believe its real, .

After a while the skies became really really cloudy, so I could only see other objects for a short period of time, I also saw only one meteor, but what I've seen before was really enough for me at the time. Sorry for the long post

[Charic]

Don't be sorry, sounds like you had a memorable time.
The good folk that asked questions, had a look, could well be joining this forum on the basis of what they heard and saw that night, from a local expert  at a small site nearby?  ?

[msacco]

43 minutes ago, Charic said:

Don't be sorry, sounds like you had a memorable time.
The good folk that asked questions, had a look, could well be joining this forum on the basis of what they heard and saw that night, from a local expert  at a small site nearby?  ?

Well, who knows, there were so many people asking questions, I was kinda shocked, small kids, teens, mature people, so many people just came by to take a look etc.

[Kn4fty]

Happy to hear that you had a great session and better than the last one! Pics never come close to seeing something yourself, even if you don't get a Hubble level of detail. I wouldn't give up my eyepiece memories for all the pictures in the world! Congrats on things starting to fall together!

[msacco]

8 hours ago, Kn4fty said:

Happy to hear that you had a great session and better than the last one! Pics never come close to seeing something yourself, even if you don't get a Hubble level of detail. I wouldn't give up my eyepiece memories for all the pictures in the world! Congrats on things starting to fall together!

Thanks, I can't wait for my next time, and the thing I want to do most is drive to a completely dark spot where I can really see a lot of new things, but before I do that I'll need to get a power supply and make sure I have everything I need for that