Tonight I finally got a clear evening to try out my new mount / telescope setup. I struggled with alignment basically because the two star method wants to use stars nearer the horizon than I have access to. It's hard to do alignment when you can't see lots of stars in both directions.
Anyway - I had some success with doing a one star alignment and spent some time looking at some crowd pleasers. I started with Polaris (since I was doing polar alignment) and eventually looked at Orion (Betelgeuse and Orion's Nebula). Then once I had the alignment working tried Pleiades and it centered perfectly in my 40mm. Super tight alignment isn't possible the way I'm doing it, but I was reasonably happy with what I could see and the clarity of this scope is insane. Even though things aren't as bright, they are super sharp. Looking at the trapezium is fun because it resolves to huge spaces between the four stars rather than one blob.
I had to try the camera and wasn't all that surprised when I couldn't see anything at all. I'll work through the book once I get the new timer and hopefully start making progress.
In any case I'm glad to be out there again in the cold and my observing chair worked perfectly :)
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