AND THIS TIME I FINALLY HAVE A TELESCOPE!!
I joined this site just under two years ago now and have always wanted to get some gear but every time i had the money something would come up that would prevent me from getting it. But now I've just got a telescope for christmas and am ready to explore the stars above
It is a Bushmaster StarExplorer SE114900, reflecting telescope (lens aperture of 4.5in, focal length 900mm). It came with a 1.5x Erecting Eyepiece, a 2x Barlow and three lenses(20mm, 12.5mm and 4mm). The manual says as it has an equatorial mount, i can use an electric clock drive with it to track the stars/planets etc. At the moment I am just content checking out the moon and manual searching the sky to see things.
The sky has been cloudy for the past week all day and night so i had no chance to really see anything, except tonight the moon was out for a couple of minutes between some clouds. By the time I moved the scope into position it had nearly gone but i got a 4 second look at it with just the 20mm lens and it was amazing. I could see craters everywhere. I've seen so many pics on the net of the moon close up and through various telescopes but it seems so much cooler when it's from my own backyard
I'm making a list of questions to ask so I'll post in this thread again when i've got them all organised. Congrats Mike(and others), this community has grown so quickly in such a short time it's great to see.
Cheers guys.
