Had a blast using my telescope for the first time tonight. Pulled a bit of a crowd (mum and daughter from neighbouring unit and both parents and two kids from next door plus the missus). Initially I was a bit worried and annoyed because it was the first time I used it as a telescope, first time aligning mirrors and first time alligning the GoTo software to real stars. Lucky the software made me look like I knew what I was doing. Spectacular views of the universe and having the GoTo allowed us to see so much more. Telescope and GoTo performed better than expected. After initial alignment, the auto tracking kicks in and compensates for the rotation of the Earth, so I didnt have to constantly re-center the object we where looking at (remembering the hassle of having to do this with old manual telescope). GoTo finding objects was pretty much spot on. It is great to be able to manually push it around, then let the GoTo take over without re-alignment.
Compared to smaller scopes, my 10 inch scope (light bucket) wont make the bright planets look any better but the extra apeture makes a greater number of the dimmer deep space objects visable. Even with lots of clouds, tall buildings all around and light pollution we still had plenty to look at. Only two planets possible with the solar timing and other restrictions (clouds / tall buildings). I could tell Uranus was a planet (pretty sphere) and Jupiter looked amazing. Nice detail with the cloud bands and I think I could just make out the spot (one of the cloud bands had a lump). Easily recognisable as Jupiter and amazing to see Jupiters details with own eyes (I have before, but not for like 15 years)
I could see so much detail in Orion Nebula. 10 inches of apeture absorbed plent of light from the dimmest details of the nebula and focused it all on the back of my eye balls. My favorite part of the night. The black dark patches blocking light and also the cloudy light with detail of different looking segments and lines. Dialled up plenty of messier objects and little fuzz balls of light in the finder scope turned into beautiful clusters. I really look forward to being able to point the telescope at Andromeda.
Almost dont wanna post this photo. Comes nowhere near to doing the viewing experience justice. My eyepieces have some camera standard thread, however the mobile phone just doesnt cut it. I had to hold my mobile phone up to the eyepiece to take this photo. Couldnt get any detail at all. Light washed out everything. I even tried darkening with moon and light filters on the eye piece, but soon as the phones camera takes a pic in black / dark, any small amount of light just blurs and washes out. The moons look oversized because I manually held the phone and the image blurred. Jupiter and moons looked nothing like this when viewing tonight, but you can see Jupiter and the four Galilean moons. From left to right is Ganymede, Io, Jupiter, Europa and Callisto.
So tired...
