Saturday the 'scope arrived. So did the clouds and rain, which then stayed until after work today. Rents started showing up in the clouds after sunset, so out into the yard we went. No time to cool the beast down, I just took what I could get and hoped for the best.

To get practice on using all the new eyepieces, I started with the moon and looked at smaller and smaller pieces of it. All the optics looked great (at least to a neophyte slightly carried away by the occasion). The crater walls were wavering somewhat; I don't know what number to give that sort of seeing, but it didn't interfere much with the view. What amazed me was how QUICKLY the moon marched out of the field of view when using the 7mm eyepiece. You could see it moving--a most demonstrative experience of the profound clockwork of the heavens. How small we are, how small indeed.

I poked around on some stars, finding some of the brighter ones (Deneb, Altair, Vega) and used them to refine the collimation of the finder scope to the main tube. The air was clean, and that, coupled with the clouds blocking a lot of the city light pollution, allowed me to find Cassiopeia (usually washed out around here, between San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland, not to mention the sodium street lamp right in front of my house....sigh). This star-catching was an exercise in learning to use the controls quickly, to catch views (of anything!) through the holes between the clouds rolling by.

After raining for 3 days, the humidity was, um, high. About this time I began to notice things getting fuzzy, and sure enough, a layer of dew was all over the SCT's 'front window'. Then the wife called for dinner and it was time to pack it in, eat, and do the evening chores. When I looked at my watch, an hour and a half had gone by, but it seemed like only seconds!