Hi! I'm new here!

Hello all. A childhood fascination with all things astronomical has been rekindled by the missus who kindly presented me with a fine telescope for Christmas. It is a Skywatcher Pro 150 and has knobs, buttons, levers, tabs, screws and all kinds of scarily mathematical-looking scales and graduations.

I've figured out how to put it all together and take it apart again - it's quite a learning curve...

Hey hows it going!!

your at the right forum for all buttons and maths stuff :lol:

plenty of experienced helpfull lads here to answer all questions stupid ones included :lol: :lol:

Welcome along BP, Nice job there with the Skywatcher!

Keith..

Welcome Blackpig.
It's a pity you're ''locked up in the stable with the sheep''.
Those Skywatchers work way better outside

I have the thing set up in the back bedroom in the hope that the moon will swing around so that I can have a squint at a reasonable hour. It looked spectacular even through the spotter scope - I had that out in the garden earlier. Skywatchers are not exactly portable so I'm not carting it out to the garden tonight - my dogs have left their trademarks out there too so I'll have to clean the place up a bit first.

The moon should be ok to observe through glass window cuz it is big and near. But forget about observing anything else through a window really. The glass window (like all eyepieces) causes abbretion(sp?)......................

Basically the glass in the window will scatter the different colour lightwaves at differnt angles and you will see objects as only white and even see 2 or 3 "drop shadow" versions of the same object in different colours.

Also if there is a central heating radiator below the window and it is turned on...this will cause thermals "hot air" to rise and obscure your view through the window also.

Because its been so cold and cloudy since i bought my scope back at the end of Nov...............i have viewed a few times through my window and was not happy with what i saw. I thought the scope was broken or just CRAP.....................

Until i took it outside.

so that I can have a squint at a reasonable hour.

There is no reasonable hour in astronomy. If the sky is clear when the sun goes down til it comes up the next morning....................that is your "reasonable hour".

Of course i can say that cuz i work for myself from home so i dictate my working hours. Most people aint that lucky.