My new telescope (an Orion SkyView Pro 6LT OTA) arrived yesterday. I
came home to mostly clear skies and dutifully sat down to dinner and
helped put my older daughter Grace (2.5 years old) to bed before
opening the boxes. By the time I had the OTA mounted on an old
SkyView Deluxe Equatorial mount I already had and got it outdoors the
clouds had started to roll in. I got a look at the Moon before the
clouds were too thick to see through.

I bought the tube rings and 8x50 right angle finder scope with the
OTA. It all went together nicely. I already had the large and small
counterweight for the mount, but I'll need to get another large
counterweight (replacing the small one) in order to balance the
telescope.

When Grace came downstairs this morning her reaction was "Telescope!
Big big telescope!" She's Daddy's little girl. I let her play with
the finder for a while before swapping it for the Edmund's cardboard
tube telescope she normally plays with.

The forecast for tonight is for clear skies, but given the new
telescope I'm not too optimistic.

--
Brian Reynolds | "But in the new approach, as you know,
| the important thing is to understand
http://www.panix.com/~reynolds/ | what you're doing rather than to get
NAR# 54438 | the right answer." -- Tom Lehrer