Got home yesterday afternoon to an awesome suprise! Sitting on my back varandah was not only the new 12" Dob but also the book I ordered from Amazon last week (Turn Left at Orion). Got it all set up but it needed collimating. I work for a surveying company and collimating is exactly the same as how we level our tripods so I thought it would be a simple 2 minute job. Well it would of been if I had loosened the locking nobs enough! After about 20 minutes of my cursing and swearing that I couldnt turn them enough to make my laser shoot back to the correct position, I realised the bolts werent loose enough. It then took all of 2 minutes to get it nicely collimated and ready to go.
Everything last night was a huge trial and error as I have never used a telescope in my life. Took me about 15 minutes to locate the moon lol but once i had it in focus looking through my 13mm Nagler the first words out of my mouth were "Holy Crap!" I was totally amazed at what I was seeing. I loved looking at the left side of it where it appeared as though there were bits of moon actually floating above the surface, though I think they were probably high peaks that were catching some of the sun while the bits below were in darkness.
I spent a good hour or so marveling at the moon and then tried to locate some of the brighter stars in the sky as the light from the moon and the light pollution were washing most of the dimmer object away. For the life of me I couldnt get any of the stars I could see through the finder scope into my view through the eye piece. So after half an hour of frustration I ran back inside remembering I had forgotten to attach the telrad.
Once that was on and aligned right, I ligned up Alpha Centauri and HAZA! it was in the middle of my view looking through the eye piece. I was able to make out both stars quite easily which shocked me because I didnt realise it was a binary. I then had a look at Antares, looked cool bright and orange blazing back at me.
By this stage it was getting close to midnight and I work early, so had another quick look at the moon (blown away again by it) then called it a night. Going to be reading my new book tonight so next time I go out there I will actually know what I'm searching for
Overall it was an awesome experience and instanty has me hooked and wanting more. Will get my first view of Jupiter on the weekend if weather stays nice.
