Greetings from Leicestershire

[nobbytate]

Hi and welcome to the lounge

[Rufusgj]

Hello and welcome to SGL from a fellow newb!

[Parus major]

Welcome buddy! Nice choice of Scope.

I wonder if you agree, I am totally convinced that the Leicester Asda is filled with the highest number of attractive women I've seen in one place EVER!

[Slangers]

First light with Nexstar 8SE

Got outside with Nexstar for an hour early this evening and put it through its paces for the first time. The alignment process is simple and worked very well for me once I had got the tripod absolutely level. Views of Jupiter were stunning and clearly the optics are great. Most other things not viewable as the moon is so bright tonight, but I did look around at a few other things in the less light polluted zone. Got my first ever bona fide view of Uranus, which was very pleasing.

After about 70 minutes I had to abandon because of dew. I hadn't thought it would be quite such a problem never having used an SCT before. It was amazingly abrupt and terminal though. I was just observing occultation of Io and starting to play around with a barlow and 10 mm lens when BANG- complete fog out. I guess that the corrector plate suddenly hits optimal conditions for dew to form and that's that. I've had a dew cap on order for weeks and have now ordered a dew zapper- I think all UK suppliers are out of stock though and I will be waiting for a long time. Has anyone got any other top tips for dealing with dew?