Hi,joined in march,ready to talk,first light report

[saberonyx]

Well I read enough first light reports over the last few months to know this will not be a very well written scientific log of my first look at the heavens through my new Apertura AD12 Dobsonian Reflector Telescope(with tweekers dream package). Mostly because of the late night timing,no collimation of the scope,no aiming the finder scope ,clouds all over the place and a moon as bright as a spotlight shinning down lighting up my whole backyard!.....But ,a big but ,I had the best view of a star (vega,in lyra) and Saturn that these old eyes can handle in one night. Yep,my son helped me carry the light bucket outside,we put it out on the deck and I told him to get lost for 15 minutes,I had to figure the monster out!..Through a quick break in the clouds I aimed the big boy at the only thing I saw except the moon,which was vega...I loaded in the 2" 30mm SuperView eyepiece (low-power) with 68 degree field of view and bam,wow,beautiful,like a diamond shinning blue-white. So I guess the scope survived the transporting pretty good.It came in great shape right out of the box. So my son came back out to check it out and he had a look and just smiled .He said quick swing it around and catch Saturn as it was getting pretty low already(1;30 am).I pointed it at saturn and bam again(i;m not joking,all by the eye aiming,the spotting scope wasnt touched).The clouds covered it up fast but we saw Titan(moon) and I believe another smaller bright moon closer on the right side...Well thats it for the first night,basicly I just wanted to make sure the scope was ok,so it looks like it past the test.Now I will start taking my time on the baby and do things the right way...It was very excitng hour. I have been reading everything on this site and the information is top notch...I do feel like a little guy here but i want to thank you guys for letting me rub shoulders with you. What i have in my favor is 40 years of looking up through my little scope,now I got a little bigger scope to look at the heaven with...lol.lol.....oh yes,now on to the faint fuzzies !!!

[Preston Pendergraft]

Great first night out with with a new scope. I am sure you saw Titan since it is pretty easy to see around Saturn. You should be able to spot quite of few moons of Saturn with that scope. There is a great iPhone app called Gas Giants that plots the moons of Jupiter and Saturn.

Now just wait till you take that scope out and see some of the deep sky objects within reach of that 12in mirror!

[saberonyx]

:)I'm baaccckkk!. Yes,I know it's impossible you say,13 straight days of the CuRsE. %$(*!>..The clouds and rain cleared away,I got home from work at 5pm",yes it's still light out" I said to my wife as she looked at me crazy.I was hoping for twilight real fast before clouds come back..Well ,at 9pm it was getting dark so I carried the 12" out,placed it on the deck and headed right for m57 (ring n).. I knew just what I wanted to see.Now I'm an old star hopper,so that baby ain't getting away from me,In lay mans terms,It's right between those two stars at the bottom of Lyra(everyone knows that,right?)..BAM .There it was in the middle of my 30mm,yes it was even bigger than I could imagine it.(I never saw it with my own eyes).It was just like they say,a smoke ring.Hey,I'm not going to waste anytime,I want more magnification.I dropped in the 9mm plossl and the smoke ring became twice the size.Thinking about it this morning , I should have looked for that star in the middle,was it there??Would I be able to see it???? (A side note...My son just got home from work and went right up to his room,he didn't know I was on the deck so I text him "get your butt out here,I'm outback stargazing") Yes,we text each other around the house,this is 2012 youknow.He saw m57 right off the bat and described it to me perfectly as I shouted lets look at Saturn again!!..This time I got him to swing the Dob around and line up through the spotting scope ,I taught him how to fine tune the crawford focuser and he got Saturn right away.It looked like all the moons were lined up like a water-fall flowing off of Saturn on the right side!! An amazing site to see.....Hey,thats it for tonight,it might seem simple but i'm starting off slow ....:P

[saberonyx]

you were right PRESTON,i saw a whole bunch of those moons last night!!