I was watching the cloud cover radar online for hours. Finally the skies opened up. I was outside on the back deck in minutes with the new telescope. Long story short: I saw Saturn, rings and all for the first time in my life!
I set the telescope up inside. Not too hard. It looked like a lot of steps on paper but it only took about ten minutes and that was being careful to actually read the manual. I carried it downstairs to the back deck and turned off all the lights in the house.
The first step in the process was to calibrate the viewfinder. But before I did that I centered the scope on the moon. Wow. I've never seen the moon like that. A full field of view. Craters, shadows. Tons of detail.
The viewfinder is a small side viewer that helps you target things on a macro scale before moving to the eyepiece where you're really zoomed in. You control this telescope with a keypad. Left, right, up and down. Speed control. Your goal is to put something into the center of the viewfinder and center of the scope at the same time. In this way you get them aligned.
Next you have to make sure the computerized keypad knows where it is in relation to all of the stars. I told it I was in Atlanta, GA. The date and time. Then it has me focus on one bright star and hit Align. Doing this just three times with any stars I choose... and without telling it which stars I'm choosing (because I hardly know their names)... it can figure out what I'm looking at. If you think about it this is kind of amazing. Give it the geometric relationship between any three bright stars and it looks across all possibilities to figure out where I'm pointing.
It failed on my first attempt. Because I messed up military time. It was 2200 hrs, not 2000 hrs. Oops. By the second time through I was getting rather facile at the process. What at first seemed a burden started to be a breeze.
On the second time around it told me that it accepted my alignment. Yay. Now let's go check out some star stuff. I punch the Andromeda Galaxy into the keypad... the telescope whirs... to point at the house. Out of my reach tonight. So I punch in a couple nebulae. And see nothing. Hmmm. A little concerned, I punch in Mars.
About this time I realize that the alignment is a little off. Likely because I'm not exactly in Atlanta and my analog watch isn't synced to anything. This astronomy stuff requires a certain level of precision. I was, however, able to nudge the scope towards what I think was Mars. I didn't get much definition off of it.
Getting a little concerned, I punch in Saturn. I know that it's not going to point me directly to it. But I do some nudging. And then... rings! A little more focusing and it's clear that I'm looking at Saturn. It's small in the viewer but it's obviously the same thing we see on tv and in books.
I've been interested in astronomy since I was five years old. Literally. Somebody gave me an astronomy book and since then I've always been fascinated. But I've been limited to reading and television. Oh, and getting a degree in physics was in no small part inspired by my interest in space. The only other time I've looked into a powerful telescope was to see Halley's Comet with my mom.
I felt this sense of amazement. I mean, this thing is real. I was seeing it with my own two eyes. Pretty cool.
I woke Terp up, dragged her out onto the deck and showed her Saturn's rings. She was totally not in the mood at first but admitted that it was pretty cool once she saw it.
Lots of work to do now. I've got some accessories on order to get my computer and DSLR talking to the telescope. I've got a piece of software that has tons of objects programmed into it. My alignment abilities definitely need work. I need to find a better vantage point... the deck vibrates too much. Tonight the moon was about half full and created a lot of light pollution. As does Atlanta.
I'm really excited to see a galaxy and a nebulae. Ooh, and a comet or two. Thanks again to the fam for this excellent gift! I really am excited like a little kid right now about astronomy. I'm amazed that I haven't done this until now. But somewhat happy because it is so exciting and I have so much more background knowledge about the universe. If I did it in high school a) I wouldn't have ever talked to girls (oh, wait, I didn't anyway) and b) I might have burned out on it.
Heading to Doc with Terp