Gotcha!

Got my eyepiece kit (two eyepieces and three filters) and Astronomy For Dummies book today (as mentioned below). The collimation tool came yesterday.

Haven't tried the eyepieces/filters as yet, but I did tinker with the alignment of the scope a bit. Didn't mess with the primary mirror only the secondary mirror which was a bit of a bugger. I was trying to turn the center screw on it. Turns out that's NOT what you turn, it's the three allum key screws to tilt the secondary mirror then tweak the stalk bolt to move the mirror in/out of the scope (as you look through the eyepiece of the collimation tool). I think I've got it right. Did a quick check by looking at Jupiter and nothing was out of the ordinary, so I reckon, while I haven't tweaked much, I certainly haven't done it any bad. Yaayy!!


Hopefully the moon will make an appearance tonight so that I can test the moon filter and the new 9mm eyepiece. With any luck, there'll be new photos!

The Sun and the Moon

First I tried some sun projections which went OK, but couldn't get decent photos of them as I'm holding a piece of paper in one hand, camera phone in the other. Due to not being a contortionist I didn't get any decent photos of the projection, but I did (in the process) manage to partially screw up my phone's camera. I held the phone over the eye piece (on camera) to see where the sun was on screen, rather than blind myself. Doing this I think I've damaged the camera sensor in my phone. *sigh*  :(

In other (better) news: I noticed a clear sky this afternoon and took advantage of it to snap some new photos of the moon with my digital camera:

I think, with the digital camera, you need to use a larger eyepiece (25mm in my case) then tinker with the camera zoom to get a focus.

Either way, I think my scope needs collimating (calibrated) *dramatic music* as the slightest movement of the eye/camera and your left seeing shadows. Oh, and I also need to clean my eyepieces.

An astronomers lot is never a happy lot...  :D