I've been doing it all wrong!

[JSeaman]

Over the past few days I have been building a roll off roof observatory to house my 300P. I was outside and figured I'd just collimate the scope while I was there, 2 hours later and it's collimated and polar aligned and I have the goto all set up. For years I have been doing this by running 'frame and focus' through my camera viewing the tiniest portion of the sky with a 1/2 second or more lag which could take 3+ hours. Tonight I did it with eyepieces and it took about 30 seconds. Lesson learned, don't get too bogged down with leaving the camera in place and focused. 

I never do visual normally but this scope is made for it so I had a quick play. Slewing to the moon as an easy start a 25mm eyepiece showed a very crisp vista and extracted an 'oooh' from my teenage daughter. I popped a 4x imagemate in and a 10mm eyepiece and got up close and personal on a few craters and that had the wife peeping at things.

I slewed over to Mars next which was just a bright blob but still a nice sight. I tried M45 (Pleiades) and I liked seeing the sharp and bright stars. That one is less impressive I think for non-astro people as it just looks like stars but I was happy.

Then I did a bit of galaxy hopping, M31 Andromeda I had never looked at in an eyepiece and it's quite a nice fuzzy smudge! M81/M82 let me set things up on the other side of the sky so my goto should roughly work in both directions now.

Next will be getting the guiding up and running and then trying some imaging but for now I'm happy to have my first go at looking around the night sky with a big reflector. Oh and no sleighs were spotted during my time outside

[andrew s]

Now it's in your observatory you should not need to do it again,  a least for a long time.

Regards Andrew 

[Spile]

I’ve come to similar conclusions as you. I was delighted to view Uranus and Andromeda last night, even though one was a blue dot and the other a misty blob.

Never say never but I don’t intend imaging other than the occasional point and click with my phone. 
I often prefer real-time observation rather than needing to record and that applies when travelling to spectacular places (remember that?) and valuing the memories of what you saw rather than the recordings.

That said, as much as I love live performances, I couldn’t do without recorded music.

Edited January 6, 2021 by Spile

[JSeaman]

Andrew - Yes exactly, it's the one time set up that takes forever. Although with all this weight on the mount it's very easy to move it with the clutches locked so I can see me doing it again at some point!

Dots and blobs are great, it's just so much easier than astrophotography. That said, I am very much an imager over an observer and hopefully I'll be able to pull the guiding in to something usable soon