[ATM] first light for real

[Guy Brandenburg <gfbrandenburg@yahoo.com>]

Yee-hah again!

Had a real first light (night-time style) this evening
with the 12.2" f/6. 

It's amazing how stable that sucker is - it moves
very, very smoothly and stays put once you get it
there. Thanks, Kriege & Berry! And you can see LOTS of
stars, even from my light-drenched driveway (alley
street lights 15 feet away, neighbors' security
lights, and so on). And you can see COLORS in the
stars very, very obviously. Found an extremely orange
star somewhere in the neighborhood of Sirius; not
exactly sure where this orange star is precisely,
because I don't have a finder attached or lined up
yet. So far, I have discovered that I have to put my
right cheekbone two fingers above a handle and look
with my right eye just above a knob in the secondary
cage to try to find anything. Gotta fix the
collimation soon.

Standing on a milk crate works OK when the scope is
elevated, but that won't be enough for short people. I
still need to cut off nearly an inch from the truss
tubes; only one of my eyepieces will come to a focus.
I also need to increase the baffling so that I can
observe at all from places like this. I see the glow
from the street lights almost as much as the stars,
from my driveway. 

I just can't stop gloating. It's great!

Guy


=====
Guy  Brandenburg
Washington, DC
My home page:
http://home.earthlink.net/~gfbranden/GFB_Home_Page.html
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