Aligning 10 times in one night...

[Captain Scarlet]

I set up the 12” OO-mirror SW-blue-tube newt this afternoon in spite of the bright Moon, as I haven’t used it for ages. A bit of a waste of big aperture but I’m a rebel. I’d earlier changed a setting on my Nexus DSC to display alt-az coordinates instead of equatorial and in the field trying to control my ax-eq6 it didn’t like it one bit. At the first opportunity after alignment it wanted to flip azimuth 180 degrees. I ended up doing alignment about 10 times before I realized what might be the problem. I flipped the setting back to equatorial display and all was good again. Must report it to Serge.

Tegmine, Porrima, Decapoda all nicely viewed and split. Beta monosc triple also seen for first time but behind a tree so not perfect.

Moon was able to take 520x magnification and still be occasionally sharp and fascinating.

So a somewhat frustrating session spending more time aligning than viewing but lessons learned and better than raining!

Cheers, Magnus

[Nik271]

Any observing session is better than a cloudy night. 520x on Moon is very impressive! I have never gone beyond 450x in my  Mak but a 12 inch scope should be capable of this and more. Must be a beast on the planets.

Last night I stayed below 180x as there was some high cloud and only the Moon was punching through it. It was still worth it - Copernicus looked lovely near the terminator.  This evening seems more promising ... 🙏