Telescope obtained and assembled, and now used a few times.

Assembly took all evening Monday and some additional time Tuesday. The implication being: if you expected to open the box, attach it to the tripod and get right outside with it, this would not be the telescope for you. No, this took about four total hours of assembly time. All in all it wasn’t that difficult or confusing. I actually enjoyed doing it. But, that’s the kind of person I am. I sometimes think I should have a business where I assemble people’s furniture for them because I believe that I dislike doing that less than others. (It’s probably not viable because I’d have to charge enough to make it worth my own time, which would subsequently raise the total cost of the item up to where it would make more sense for people to just buy some higher-quality, already-assembled furniture. Anyway.) So of course I naturally had the thought that I should contract out to build people’s telescopes for them, but that also fails as a business model because the kind of people that buy $1300 telescopes are the kind of people that like to do the building themselves. (They are also generally the kind of people that think it might be awesome to buy a Klingon Empire flag and attach it to their house.) Like me.

We’re in the middle of a really clear stretch of weather so I got to exercise my obsession immediately. Thursday I got it out despite having no idea how to use the computer control. My feeling was, I still know how to point a telescope at stuff. The moon was really nice. Bright enough through the telescope to wash out your retinas and ruin any darkness adjustments your eyes have made to that point. But really nice look at crater details and such. I got K out to have a look, though I failed to show her the view through the more powerful eyepiece. She went back in because it was cold, but I stayed out to check out the Orion Nebula and a few stars (i.e., things I could find with the naked eye). I tried to figure out how to use the computer but that turned out to be pretty amusing for the computer, I’m sure. Definitely need to read the manual. So all told, I wasn’t out too long, but it was productive and a nice first run.

Things I learned:

• This telescope is heavy. To get it outside I can either break it down properly and haul it out in four components, or take a shortcut and just do two heavy ones. Of course I did the latter just to prove how manly I am and do things the brute force way rather than the smart easy way, but now that there are no questions about my mettle I’ll probably try to make a habit of doing it the smart easy way from now on.
• Clomping around and hauling large telescope pieces out a door I usually don’t use scares the hell out of the cats.
• The finder scope requires a bit of alignment but that’s pretty easy to do.
• It’s fairly straightforward to find visibly bright objects in the sky without computer aid. If I wanted to take the time to find things manually I could do that. Maybe for fun, on occasion. (Yes, I sad “fun.”)
• My scope is well-designed for hand-slewing. It smoothly moves around with moderate force and will stay stable as long as you don’t bump it. However, I’m already missing a motor control that will keep objects in the field of view automatically.
• My backyard is not the greatest for astronomical observing, but it’s certainly workable. More discussion on this later.
• The attached computer will take at least some rudimentary education to learn to use, rather than just my trying to figure it out on the fly.

I got out again for a longer observing session last night. Will post that update soon.