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by GYULA
I was up till 3am sunday morning with my LX5 8" SCT(I start to get handy with this scope), observing from my light poluted back yard in Pleasanton.
I clocked many great Messier objects: M5, M3, M13, M92, M51, M10, M12, M56, M57, M27.
I was trying to get the North American nebula and Veil nebula,(they were just coming over my roof top) and some of the galaxies next to Deneb, but I couldn't see them, though they look pretty big according to my map, I tried different eyepieces, filters, but the sky was blank. Do they need dark sky to view these objects?
Anyway, I had chance to try out my new 50mm 2" Orion eyepiece, very impresive for wide field view.
I seen two shooting stars and a satellite crused through my scope, I always get excited when I see these, and I wish some one else would see it also.
I took some picture of the moon and Venus with my new Meade tele-extender, (K1000 camera with 400 ASA b&w film)using eyepiece projection. I found out, only my meade 26mm super plossel eyepiece fits in to the tele-extender. My other ones are different brands and wider.
But that was plenty of power for the moon. Looks like I have to upgrade to meade eyepieces.
Finally I got my SCT fork leveled out, now I only get 1/2 degree or less miss-alignment between the mechanical and the optical axis. I bought this carpenters bulls-eye water-level, which has a 1/2 and 1 deg. circle mark on it. It worked pretty good.