Howdy from Canberra

[Orbviper (Nick)]

Thanks for the advice Brent. I figured it might be rather bright. Even through my 10x50s the full moon was getting close to painful to look at sometimes.

My dob came with a plastic aperture cover that sits in the middle part of the tube (the bottom half of the collapsible tube). This has a ~50mm diameter hole with a separate cap on it offset from the center that I was a little confused by before. I'm assuming now that it must be for this purpose! This is assuming it actually fits onto the end of the scope as snugly as it sits in the bottom half.

[Orbviper (Nick)]

I can see what you meant about it being a whitish blur. Even with the cap on to cut out most of the light, it was still hard to make out much detail. I could very easily see the shimmering from atmospheric disturbance though!

[Jon (Jonathan)]

Originally Posted by Orbviper

I can see what you meant about it being a whitish blur. Even with the cap on to cut out most of the light, it was still hard to make out much detail. I could very easily see the shimmering from atmospheric disturbance though!

The shimmering (we call it the "seeing") gets better the closer the object is to overhead. In particular, if you were looking at the moon early in the evening when it was say 20 or so degrees above the horizon it would have been very bad.

Have another go tonight (it's a glorious weekend cloud-wise), after 10 PM, and focus on the edge of the moon where the sun is setting. You'll see much more detail.