C8 First light - great scope, bad astronomer :)

[Sci Fi Guy]

Morning all!

I took my C8-NGT out for the first time last night, but I reckon I was altogether too zealous.

I'd built my scope up in the living room on Thursday night and had come to grips with the balancing and motion of it. However, my search for a power supply yesterday I reckon made me a little too eager to get out and get a two star alignment out of it and get cracking!

My first mistake was not having it point north to begin with. At the moment the sun is right outside my bedroom window when it rises, and like an idiot I took that to be East. Of course, with the time of year the sun is actually rising almost dead on SE and so what I assumed to be North last night was actually NE.

My second mistake was not taking the time to align my finder scope. It would have been good to have done that early evening when it was still light, as about a mile and a half away is the university clock tower, easily visible from my drive.

My third mistake was not doing any kind of polar alignment at all, not even sorting out the latitude scales on my scope.

All of this led to a nightmarish time trying to do the star alignment. My GoTo would start slewing to a star which I could see was waaaay to the left of where the scope said it was. Then, even when I was pointing in even vaguely the right direction, the finder scope was showing me something completely different. I had also not accounted for the sheer number of stars visible in my finder scope that weren't visible with the naked eye, and so could not pinpoint my target star anyway!

I tried for about an hour, unable to see anything through the main tube at all because I hadn't even focused my eyepiece properly then packed her up again.

After this however, I took my finder scope out on its own and thought I'd have a go at familiarising myself with the new abundance of stars out there, seeing if I could recognise any named stars. This time I found it soooo much easier as my eye and the scope were trying to look at the same thing!

I have to say I now see why everyone recommends using binoculars when starting out, as I was really blown away by some of the things my finder scope could see. I could see a few hazy patches in Casseopeia which I think may have been clusters. The Pleiades were absolutely beautiful, and you can really see the blue hue to the stars and their nebulosity. I think what made the evening for me though was looking at Orion as it was in the perfect place in the sky, and being able to pick out the Orion Nebula. It looked like a milky rose, turned slightly to one side, with two bright pin pricks of light in the middle. This will definitely be one of my main targets once I get my scope set up properly, as right now it's right on my front door step.

I'll have another go this evening and get out earlier this time, taking more care and being more patient.

Ben

[Psychobilly]

Hi Ben,

Sort out the things that you mention an I am sure you will be rewarded with some truly amazing vies through your scope...

I had a similar evening lastnight when a few of us went into the hills to get Kev 102 his first deep sky image. I took along m ETX 105 which I haven't used for 11 months since getting CPC800 and settignthe OBS setup. I naturally assumed that I would remember how to setup the scope use the menus on the hand controller etc - how wrong could I be... I also assumed that the batteries in the focus controller would be OK not having been used for a year...no probs you can drive the focuser from the autostar handset... if you can remember how to use it...so very soon the etx was packed away so we could all admire the works of SGLs latest DSO imager... A Certain Mr Kev 102.....

Billy...

[Doc]

You are making simple mistakes because you are too eager.

Make a check list of things to do. And get out earlier and start checking them off.

When using the finder use the "both eyes open" technique. It takes a while to get used to it but it makes life alot simpler.

Pick a bright star something like Deneb (Alpha Cyg) and get this into the centre of your eyepiece then adjust your finder scope until it's also in the centre of that. Keep looking in both until the Deneb is bang in the middle of both eyepiece and finder.