[Quopaz (Nick)]

I ended up getting the GoTo/Synscan dobsonian upgrade kit for my 10" dob. Put it all together last Saturday. Drilled the 2 extra holes, had to take the primary mirror out to get at it etc. but it went together pretty well. Then of course had clouds and rain for the next 5 nights! But last night (early this morning) I gave it it's first run and was pretty impressed. Easily beats what I was doing before with the drift and manual tracking. Actually tracked pretty well. I made a level block to sit it on out of a big piece of red gum I cut with the chainsaw. Lined it up with North and used the sidereal tracking mode so I didn't have to do a star alignment. So much easier than what I was doing before. It was a clear sky, but it was quite windy which downgraded the seeing conditions. But I managed to get Jupiter on the camera after half an hour or so of trying and realigned the finderscope. (there was no moon to sight in on) After that it was easy. Ended up with this pic of Jupiter with the red spot and Io's shadow. Also got some video of Mars and Saturn but not processed yet. Can't wait to see what it can do in really good conditions.