simple pleasures...

Last night - for a few hours at any rate, the sky was clear. Little bright twinkley things appeared and filled the sky in every direction - so I decided to bring out the 16" Dobson and visit some old friends.
First off I decided to take my time on Collimation and set up, and in particular, getting the Telrad finder as accurate as possible by using Polaris as an object to centre in both the view finder and telrad, this made later finding of objects so much easier than my usual "there or there abouts" philosophy.
So set up and ready to go I swung the beast around the sky looking at the useal suspects such as M57, M13, M31, a few doubles and a couple of faint galaxies.
One heart stopping moment was the feckin cat - while setting up the truss dob.
Imagine the scene, the Dobson is pointing upward, the 8 aluminium tubes are secured and the mirror is installed, the said "feckin cat" walks across the mirror aghhhhhhhhh. What can ya do..... :evil: :ermm:
Anyway although it was not a long nights observing, it was a quality night.

Signed
Declan

Very Disturbed Co Laois

You're right about it being a quality night Declan, I was out too, the stars of the milkyway were gleaming I was looking over some old novae fields hoping to catch one.

After a couple of hours I just stood back with a nice cup of hot tea and stared at the rising moon and Jupiter

Keith.

sorry I missed it last night, Declan id love to get a look at that Dob of yours, and get some ideas about how to collimate one. I think the club scope i have a loan of is way off.

Don't worry Manicical David, we can arrange more observing sessions - as for collmination its really easy with the Dob. It might be an idea to bring the club dob to a monthly meeting and collminate it (show how it's done)
I'm still surprised how a simple matter of ensuring your finder, optical or otherwise is accurate can make a difference to your observing pleasure by making zeroing in on objects easier......alright for those folks with fancy go-to set ups and electronic wizardry : angry: : cheer: