For our friend Malcolm.........

Bob, Brendan, Andria and myself (Dave) decided to go to the school to setup and see how we would get on for the Messier Marathon to be held in March and April. After quick ring round we met at the school at 20:30 and setup Andria's 8" Meade LX90. The weather was cool and clear above with slight cloud around the horizon. The school lights assisted in setting up the scope (although did nothing for our night vision) then we were off trying to polar align the scope.............Point North..................put the tube horizontal.....................then select a star and go! Well that took at least 45 minutes to get right and finally we had Sirius then Aldebaran in the scopes view using the GOTO function.

As an aside we used my Meade 40mm eyepiece which provided a wide field of view and since I purchased on Saturday at the Astrofest (an Excellent event) in London for the small sum of £40 it has proved a excellent buy :-)

So we then punched in M42 then M36 into the handset and both appeared although due to light pollution and the fact we were at low power on the eye piece we could not see M43. We then tried Saturn, again it appeared. M1 the Crab Nebula and Supernova remnant however managed to escape us for the same reasons as M43. We then moved across the field and setup in the corner as far from the lights as possible. Then we hit a problem.............

We did not have a dew shield on the Meade and it was now covered with water droplets. We could not see a thing. Andria's Meade was as blind as if it were daylight! Having a Newtonian reflector and not suffering from this, it was new to me. However, careful patting with a cloth provided a brief relief to the problem but soon we were blind again. We packed up and retired to the local to recap on the nights events and lessons learnt (also to warm our feet).

See you all soon.
Dave