First time gazer- long time wannabe.
I finally bit the bullet and got a 10" Dob about four weeks ago, but i have only ever been able to get it outside once thanks to this weather up here in Brissie.
Every time i go to get it out, there is cloud. And the few nights it has been OK i haven't been able to get a chance to take it for a spin. This week is looking better though!
The very first night i got a chance to get into it was on the 3rd. The seeing wasn't very good though (haze like affect, very visible when looking at the moon).
I took a bunch of photos of the moon with a borrowed Canon 7D. Not very happy with the results - most are blurry, too much ISO or too little. After playing with this for an hour i moved over to Jupiter and grabbed out my webcam.
Got a 20frame capture of Jupiter before losing it (and not being able to find it again). It was captured with a NexImage with no barlow and with no processing, so looks lacking in colour.
Not the best thing in the world but i was happy to even get this far on my first night with a telescope.
I had no luck with even finding Jupiter with my 2.5x powermate on. I find it difficult to precisely align my dob. I often overshoot and then try to correct but just lose it.
I also was unable to focus the basic finder scope included with the dob so planets appear as blobs with halo's making it even more annoying to try and track (i think im doing something wrong with it but if it is capable of focusing, it sure isn't sharing its secrets with me!).
Hoping to pack it up in the car and head out to Clear mountain or somewhere out samsonvale way to get some darker skies - after I've had much more practice
There are a few sites online which track astro weather such as 
