Thursday, June 3

Well, I took the scope out last night. I have a 10" Meade LX200, non-GPS. It's a medium sized scope by comparison, but hefty enough for me. I set it up at the end of the driveway around 9:00 and waited for it to get dark. I noticed Jupiter was out, so I attempted to locate it. My finder scope was way off and I am having a hard time getting used to this one. It has 6 knobs to adjust the alignment and takes some getting used to. Finally I found Jupiter and spent another 30 minutes fiddling with the finderscope and getting frustrated.

Jupiter looks good in this scope with the 26mm eyepiece. I dropped in the 14mm and it turned into a messy blob. Argh! The collimation (alignment of the mirrors) is off. I recently installed Bob's Knobs on the scope and haven't had a change to collimate. Jen was with me and while I tried to do the guy thing and figure it out by messing with the knobs, she started reading the book. About 15 minutes later, with much thanks to her patience and reading, we had the sucker collimated. No more messy blob, now we have a crip image and some distinct cloud bands.

Finally it got dark enough to star align this thing and let the computer do the navigating. The star alignment took about 5 minutes and we were set to go. I started with M44, the Beehive Cluster near Gemini. Always a favorite of mine and it was the first cluster I ever found. I drop the 40mm eyepiece in and enjoy the view. We try to see M67, but light pollution stops us dead in our tracks. Next I head over to the opposite part of the sky and check out M57, the Ring Nebula near Vega. Jen takes a peek and learns a valuable lesson. She can actually see better by taking off her glasses and playing with the focus. She is excited as it is the first time she has truly seen the detail of the ring. We look at a few other things: M51 & M3. They are faint, but visible. I long for dark skies, but the street light and multiple porch lights remind me that it isn't going to happen anytime soon . . . not here anyway.

About 11:30 we pack up the scope, which Jen notices takes much less time than set-up. They are predicting clear skies for Saturday, so with any luck we'll head up to the Observatory and see what we can see.

Praying for clear skies . . .