clear skys first light

[starship trooper]

well hi there,

Tonight was at last free from clouds so i got the meade ds2070 out and set it up set the date and time and all that and the got to the part for easy align and i thought to myself i dont have a compass to point the scope to mag north so i skipped that part and see that jupiter was up and shining so i alighed the scope to that and had a butchers how excited i was i could see with a 25mm ep a light disc and a little pin of light next to it which dissappered now and again the i put the 9mm ep in and i could see much detail but the veiw seem to have a lot of worm shapes and a blodge maybe the lens or ep is dirty plus there was a tree in part of veiw.

I dont think it was my eyes because i asked the misses if she could see the same .how would i go about cleaning the scope?

what should i be seeing when i look a jupiter with a 70mm refracter ?

i am going to try and get a compass tomorrow so i can start off in the right direction and initialize the autostar my be this is the beginning of something beautiful:headbang:

[TheBFG]

Congrats on jupiter, beautiful isnt it. Sorry cant help with what you should see maybe someone else can help

[todd8137]

soumds like a good night

[starship trooper]

i has inspired my to do more and want more but i am trying to hold off on buying a bigger scope until i have had some time with this one and learned a bit more.it is kinder mind blow when i see one of the moons disappear around jupiter.

Anyway i have got myself a compass now so can set the autostar up and also ordered a new star diaganal because when i look at the one fitted it seem to have a lot of light scratches on it so i have brought a revalotion dielectric diaganal also had a look at my eyepiece and they are quite dirty and the lens could do with a clean....how do i go about cleaning a refractor lens?

any can wait for more clear skies

[Capricorn]

Isn't the Meade aligned to Due North not Magnetic North?

As far as I know Meade's use due North, mine do.

If so use Polaris.

[starship trooper]

well in the manual it says point north so i was guessing magnetic north if it the celestial north how would i go about that?