by Archer Sully
Boulder isn't completely cloudy tonight, so I have my 12.5" set up on the porch. I also invited a neighbor over to have a look. He's a physicist at NIST (you get interesting neighbors in Boulder) who likes astronomy but hasn't spent a lot of time.
As usual with me, I had let the scope just sit in my office since the last time I had it out, and decided to work on it this afternoon because the weather was looking very promising. A front baffle was cut and painted (Krylon UFB), as well as a center baffle to block stray light from coming through the hole in the mirror. A Telrad was attached with electricians tape ;-). After re-assembling the secondary, I found the primary collimation still darned close to spot on. I'm going to enjoy this incarnation of the scope. It still needs a baffle opposite the focuser, but its getting there.
The day had been completely cloudless and calm, temperature in the high 50's to low 60's, so of course as soon as the sun set clouds began to move in. Oh well, if you wait for a perfect night you'll never observe, right?
Friends included a 9 year old daughter, so I stuck to bright stuff. M57 of (easy to find, even with encroaching clouds). I could see lightening in the center, but Grace wasn't sure. Alberio was next on the way to M56, which I have never successfully logged before. I managed to land directly on it, but it just isn't as impressive as M13 or even M92.
M31 and M32 provided my neighbors with a lot of entertainment. We even thought that we picked out NGC206, which I hadn't been able to identify before.
All in all, a fun evening.