First Light Report

by Nick Biunno

I would just like to quickly report that we did first light on Meifong's new telescope. We picked up a 17.5" Discovery truss dob Saturday morning. Made a quick stop at Costco to get a stepladder and headed down to Hogue Park were several scopes were set up for Mars observing.

This scope sets up very quick and collimation only took a few minutes. The action of the scope makes it easy to find and track objects. After the mirror cooled down Mars started popping into focus nicely at 247x and 370x. I guest the seeing may have been a little better than average. The detail was so clear on the disk when it popped into focus, from want we have personally observed before, we decided to get maps to learn more about what we have observed.

Just before we left we turn the scope on M57 and M13 to see what we can expect. At 370x Meifong made the comment that M13 was a nice tight open cluster with all those little pin point stars. We hope to have many goods nights on the 17.5 TD together making new personal discoveries and sharing view with our friends.