Officially Happy

I'm officially happy with my new scope.

(I bought a 102 mm Mak-Cas with a German equatorial mount a few months ago. I've taken it out only four times so far because of cold and weather and illness and general laziness.)

This time, I actually let it cool down to ambient temperature before using it (yay!) and I was able to get quite good looks at Saturn and the Orion nebula. I also tried Mars and the Pleides, but they were just above the roof, so the seeing was awful. Orion was the best I've ever seen in the city. I could make out a little bit of structure, and with averted vision some contrast between lighter and darker areas. Saturn was directly overhead, so I got a pretty good view. With my higher-magnification eyepiece, I was able to see a bit of contrast between the rings and the surface of the planet, and a little bit of the shadow on the rings.

I'm still not really happy with the mount. Partly this is because I'm not used to the German equatorial design (the old Questar I used to use has a fork mount), but it is a little rickety. I'm never sure if the scope is mounted securely, and most of the screws don't screw tight without more mnual strength than I have. But since the deal at Khan's basically got me the mount for free, I'm not going to complain too much.