Saturn and the Moon

Last night was a very clear night, and I headed out to my stargazing site. Had a sliver of a crescent moon, so, after getting the scope set up, that was my first target. I decided to have a look, even though the scope was not yet cooled down, just to get an idea of what I would see(I knew you were supposed to wait for the thing to cool down). I was able to get the moon into a sort of focus, but it was distorting, kind of like looking through a liquid - I'm guessing I was picking up heatwaves and heated air currents coming off the mirror as it cooled down. Eventually it settled in and settled down, as the scope cooled off. Incredible the detail I was able to see at both 48x and 120x.

From there I did some star gazing with my binos as I let my right eye re-adjust to the darkness (the moon is really bright). In the eastern sky, at about 12 degrees above the horizon, I saw an object I thought might be Saturn. Lo and behold, I was able to make out the rings at 48x and get much better definition at 120x, though I could not make out the Cassini division. I really need my barlow lens.

So far, I've found that manually tracking stuff (as one has to do with a Dobsonian mount), is pretty easy, and the more you use the scope, the more familiar with it you become, and the easier tracking becomes. Once you get used to right is left and left is right and up is down and down is up in the scope, its a snap. I got that down the very first night. I expect it will be a bit more of a challenge when I am able to achieve higher magnification, which means even smaller field of view.

I then started exploring around Orion; the view of M42 was the best I've seen so far. I then focused in on a double star system just to the left of and above Bellatrix and thought I observed some nebulosity around the brighter of the three stars in that grouping.

Overall a great night.