by Phil Chambers
Well, the public star party was pretty much clouded over but a good time was had by all.
Jay gave an "off the cuff" talk on amateur astro instruments and their differences. He also spent some time describing how one might want to enter the hobby. Very nice.
Sucker hole jumping was the order of the evening. Even though there wasnt more than 10 stars (if that many) visible at one time, I was able to show M57, Venus, Neptune, Uranus, M13, M30, the Moon, and a few others throughout the evening.
This was "official" first light for the Melestron 11 inch. The scope performed admirably finding some things that not only couldnt be seen visually but the pointer stars and constellations couldnt even be seen. It was putting stuff in a 13 mm ep most of the night (that is 215x or so).
Without the goto it would have been a much more limited evening. I was going to tear it down and do some touch up, painting and more critical alignments but at this point, I think I will wait as it appears to be pretty close. I do need to take the corrector off and clean it and get the aluminum filings out of the OTA :-O