Click the pictures to see a closer look at the setup.
Telescope: Meade LX200 12"
Finally took the telescope for a test drive. I've been tweaking on it for a few weeks. I'm working on making a trailer mount for hassle free set up on location. I decided that since we were going to have a clear, reasonably warm weekend, I'd go ahead and set it up in the yard, even though it's not finished. So Friday, I set it up in preparation for the following weekend.
Saturday afternoon I went out to fiddle with the telescope at about 2pm. I intended to
figure out the t-adapter so that I could be prepared to take some
astrophotos once it got dark. I spent all afternoon taking things apart
and putting them back together. I finally found a solution that would
allow the camera to attach but there was very little focus option. It
was not great but I still had fun messing around with it.
As it started to get dark I made a fire in the fire pit, because it was going to get cold.
Once Evening Came I thought I would be able to use the live view from the camera to see through the telescope. That, however didn't work. I turned the ISO all the way up, but there was no view to be had. This was disappointing but I had an inclination that this would be the case. Most images seem to be focused on long exposure so I had kind of guessed that this would be the case. Without live view it was incredibly hard to get the telescope aligned. So I took the camera body back off and put they eye piece back on. Because I was missing some key pieces for the T-adapter, I had to screw mount the camera on to the telescope. This took some time.
I decided to take the camera back off and just do some observation. After another 15 minutes or so I had the eyepieces back in place. I did a really sloppy alignment. I still need to figure out how to get polar aligned. I have the wedge set for a different latitude, so I need to work on that. I wound up doing a single star alignment with Betelgeuse. It was good enough to do some basic observation.
Kristah came out and sat by the campfire I had made in the fire pit with
Eily (our daughter) for a while. She went it after about an hour.
I watched Betelgeuse for a while, tried to see a nebula in Orion's expanding waste line, and then just wandered with the scope. I tried to get a view of Jupiter, but two conflicting star charts. My laptop chart said Jupiter over head, but my phone chart said it was about 25 degrees above the East Horizon. After fiddling a while with no luck I was ready to shut down.
I told my wife that I was about done, and I'd be in in a minute. Right as I was about to start packing up it occurred to me that the telescope had a guided tour function. I had not tried it because my alignment had been so rushed. However, I thought I'd give it a shot. So I clicked on "tonight's best" It took me immediately to Jupiter... or at least where it thought Jupiter was. It was pointing directly at a tree on the Eastern Horizon. I glanced in the direction that it pointed and saw a really bright dot that was hidden behind a wad of tree branches. I figured, "I have a 12" reflector, I should be able to see something" So I swung it around to correct for the poor alignment and gasped.
I'm not just being poetic here. I really gasped, then stepped back from the telescope and jumped up and down. I pumped my fist in the air, then went back to the eyepiece. A nice crisp view of Jupiter and four moons was shinning back at me. I could see the two main stripes of Jupiter that line up with it's moon's orbits. I was thrilled. It felt like a payoff that had been a long time coming. My first planet sighting had happened and I was really excited. I tried some different eye pieces to get a better view.
I know it wasn't exactly a scientific breakthrough but it was really exciting. So much of this discipline is tinkering with tubes, and glass, and gadgets. It's almost like, once you finally get everything working you're transported beyond. It was a great payoff.
On top of this, I was listening to a podcast about the evidence for God in the universe. A famous Astronomer / astrophysicist was talking about our best evidence that God exists. One of his main points, is called fine-tuning. He explained that the more we have studied the skys, the more we have come to realize that it is so insanely fine tuned that there must be a designer. I'm not going to go into the details here, but I felt at least a piece of that as I watched Jupiter.
I imagined what it would be like, to be the first to point a telescope at it and realize that it's not like all the other little shiny dots. It was a magical kind of moment. I'm convinced that the heavens declare the glory of God.
