First dark sky night

[Richard N]

A trip to mid Wales gave me an opportunity to try out my Meade Adventure Scope 80 (the classic ST80 I believe). After several cloudy nights I was rewarded with a cloudless sky. It was pretty amazing -  I had forgotten what the sky actually looks like. The ST80  OTA with my own diagonal and eyepieces performed well. The eyepieces it came with were of poor quality. The supplied tripod was useless and detracted for the experience so much that I immediately bought an AZ5. Notwithstanding that I did manage to find quite a few targets. The dew eventually stopped play when all the stars looked like galaxies. One thing I did notice was that (somewhat counter-intuitively) as the night wore on it became harder to identify some constellations due to the huge number of "extra" bright stars.

 

The AZ5 has now arrived (thanks @firstlightoptics). As I would expect and hope, it's a huge improvement on the cheap repurposed camera tripod that the 'scope came with. The ST80 looks quite tiny on the AZ5. Just need less clouds.

Edited August 6, 2021 by Richard N
typo

[JeremyS]

Sounds like you had a great time 👍🏻

[City9Town0]

Dew heaters are just the start of an expensive descent/ascent!

Mid-Wales does have some good locations.