Last night was the first night for some new equipment. I figured I'd try some trial and error work with the moon giving me a bit of light. One of the items I was using for the first time was my new mounted green laser pointer. I never thought I would use it as much as I did! I think I looked through my finder scope once, the rest of the time I just popped the laser on for a few seconds.
I did hear a couple of "what's that?" coming from my neighbours who were out at their pool, but other than that it was uneventful. There were no aircraft plummeting from the sky in flames, and no police knocking on my door
Re-aligning the scope after equipment changes and balancing was also much easier when not needing to look through the finder while moving the OTA. I was playing around in Orion, so I would just slew to Rigel, do my changes, and then, using the laser, return the scope to its proper position.
Eric