First Light for Telrad

[SirFoo]

I am now officially a telrad fan. My new telrad arrived and I quickly set to work attaching it to my scope. I thought that I would have to align it like a finder scope but it was even easier than that. You just stick it down on the scope and then fiddle with dials on the telrad which moved the telrad circles until they are perfectly aligned. This took about 5 minutes. Then it was time to put the scope outside. I always put mine out for about half an our before I use it and drape a fleece cover over it. The fleece cover seems to absorb any moisture. Fisrt target of the night was going to be the ring nebula. I had tried to find this a couple of weeks before using the setting circles on my scope but has failed miserably. I consulted the telrad charts and swung the scope round and placed the telrad circles where I thought they should be. I then checked my EP and there it was! It has taken me about a minute to find something that i couldn't find after about 30 minutes of struggling the previous night.I With averted vision I could just make out the doughnut shape. Next the dumbell nebula. Again, I found it easily. I then saw the double double star,Alcor and Mizor, in the plough. I tried now for M51. This proved to be difficult for me to find. The telrads charts clearly showed me which stars to line up the circles with bu the main problem for me was that stars were not there.Too much light polution. I'll need to wait for darker skys for that one. Next jupiter with it's four moons. Jupiter was looking magnificent as always and the seeing was very good. Moving on to Albireo. This lovely double star had caused me a lot of difficulties before but with the telrad it took me seconds before I was viewing it. Finally I viewed M71. As a relative newcomer to astronomy, this was my best night yet. I was out for about 2 hours and had seen much more than usual. I can't pariase the telrad enough. This is a must buy device for any newbies. Don't forget to print your Telrad charts before you go out as this makes it so much easier to locate. Thanks

Douglas

[Moonshane]

this is the one things I'd recommend every scope owner gets - it transforms initial positioning and as you have found you can often get straight to the target!

[Bizibilder]

They really ARE good!!! as you have just discovered!