Stargazing with a telescope

“It wasn’t my telescope, but the first time I saw Jupiter and some of its moons. Honestly, it was a terrifying experience. It’s one thing to see pictures, quite another to look directly at the real thing with your own eyes. It gave me a sense of just how enormous it all was.”

“The most difficult part was pointing the telescope at that star. We borrowed a telescope (thanks Sean!) and after lots of randomly fiddling with the various undocumented knobs I finally figured out which ones did X another X, Y, Z, Y again, another Y, a yawing Y, and some sort of arc, and got it pointed towards Jupiter! The earth of course is rotating so I had to re-align it every minute or so. I think it would be a great idea for someone to make a telescope with built in gyroscopes so they will stay pointed in a particular direction.”

“i went out back when dusk was starting and saw jupiter right there so i was like sure let's try it out. didn't get any other eyepieces yet so i only had 75x as my max. it was very tiny but it was nice and crisp and i could see some color and moons and it got the fever going. not aperture fever just yet, but currently shopping for some more eyepieces.”