[ballaratdragons (Ken)]

Hi Pearl,

The fan works a treat. I put the 12" out at sunset and it got pretty warm.

By dark the scope was very cold to the touch but the mirror was still warm (felt it through the back).

Normally you would wait about an hour or so for such a large mirror to reach the same temperature as the air around it (ambient temp).

I just switched the fan on and in 5 minutes the mirror was freezing cold.
I switched the fan off and within 1 minute the air turbulants in the tube had gone and didn't affect the views.

If you need to work out the collimation method of the primary mirror, It is covered in the thread 'GS 12" mirror cell'. I couldn't work it out and Geoff and Markus helped solve it.

It's not very hard to find basic things in the sky, planets, large nebulas etc, but other stuff can be a bit hard (without maps, planispheres etc.). But I reckon half the fun is trying to find them. I don't use star maps very often but only because I spent a long time learning constellations by eye.

To start with, just use the southern star maps in the Astronomy magazines. They are nice and simple. When you get used to zooming around the sky with them, the better maps won't seem so overwhelming.

I also recommend the GS 30mm Superview 2" eyepiece. It's magic!

Hope you get your 12" soon.