Thank you to acropolite for his assistance with my telescope. He lives in the same area as me and came around to my home and spent a bit of time outside with me showing me his telescope. Some of the objects I could see that he showed me, I had no idea about. Please don't ask me to name them or remember what they were called but I know visually in the sky where they are and I will get to know them eventually.
We started looking at Orion's Belt and then moved to a small cluster of stars approx NW, then a nebula and other bits and pieces (sounds vague I know).
Anyway, I am grateful for the experience and if everyone on this forum is as helpful, I think I'm in a good place.
I look forward to getting out more (other tell me I need to do this now but I don't think they mean looking at the stars) and see what else I can find.
Thanks again Phil and appreciate your support and everyone else who has given or offered advice on the forum so far.
Scott, that is a great story and well done to Phil for being so generous with his time.
Regarding not remembering what you saw, as you go on you will find note taking starts to become important. Even just taking a small notebook and just jot down the names of the objects you saw will serve you well.
Could I please add Merlin66 (Ken) to this list of helpful ICEISmembers?
After reading my thread re designing and building a ROR Observatory Ken very kindly invited me, an unknown stranger, over to his place so that I could have a look at what he had built and to pick his brain for ideas. He answered all the questions I had - but there will be more as I get further into it ;-).
It also goes without saying that I'm extremely grateful for Ken's time and help, and also for the suggestions and advice that other members have provided by making the time to reply to the questions I've raised in the threads I've started.
It was good to meet Scott, interesting to do battle with Scott's small Reflector and hand driven EQ mount, not the easiest combination to comb the skies. We also set up my LX90, alignment was a little dodgy from too little set up time, we looked at M42 in orion, 47 Tucanae near the Small Magellenic clouds, The Jewel Box, near the southern cross, Rigel Kent a double star. We talked about a few other targets, Pleiades Centaurus A and another Globular Cluster Omega Centauri the latter two were obscured by the Eucalyptus Nebula. Unfortunately around Midnight, the dew beat us, with Tassie's dry summers usually dew at this time of year isn't a problem, but some fires or burnoff by forestry the previous day meant that the upper atmospheric moisture settled as the night cooled. The next morning at home we were fogged in, very unusual for summer.
