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Star strucked
I recently purchased a second hand 8 inch dobsonian with a goto mount.
Took it out on a clear night, 2-star aligned to Sirius and Acrux, spent the night exploring Hadar, Procyon, Gacrux, Rigil. It was a challenge trying to figure out the orientation of what I was seeing vs the phone app or whether I was looking at what it said I was looking at.
As I was exploring Becrux, I saw a little triangle cluster through the 26mm ( barely visible on the finder ) and I zoomed in to find a cluster of stars! Made the dozens of mozzie bites worth it. I suspect without the street lamps, I may have been able to see more?
The night sky is truly awesome and the experience of looking at the stars on a quite dark night cannot be compared to looking at NASA photos. Couldn't have done it without the GOTO finder.
Alignment was off so I had to use the finder scope first ( that was the first lesson ) as it was just outside the 26mm eye piece fov. Likely because it took me bloody 5 minutes to find a second star in my severely restricted view of the sky.
Tracking worked perfectly but stars would go out of focus if I left it there for ~10 minutes. Next clear night, I'm gonna bring a couple of cans of mozzie spray, caffine and find a dark, clear spot to explore the night skies!
I've got a Nikon D90, there's prolly some adapter that will fit that to the eyepiece for some long exposure for fainter nebulars or what not. Early days yet, so much to learn just to orientate myself.
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