Last night was my first observation through my first telescope, the Celestron Nexstar 8SE. It was a Christmas present from my mother, and it couldn't have been a better one. The telescope is beautiful, easy to assemble, and it works great, just as advertised. I'm really happy about it so far.
The eagerness to observe was huge. Henrique and I brought the scope outside on my front yard and took out the lids. Since the moon hadn't yet raised, our immediate choice was Jupiter, high in the sky at that time. Because the finderscope wasn't yet calibrated, we couldn't find it right away. Henrique finally managed it, and it was great. The conditions were terrible, but seeing Jupiter and its moons was a joy. I calibrated the finderscope, and then tried to align the telescope using its SkyAlign feature. After inputting the time and location, I had to center 3 bright objects in the sky. We tried to take the tour using the remote, but we couldn't see anything. We tried to point at Jupiter, but the telescope missed by a wide margin. We had done something wrong. We took a timeout because I needed to recharge the batteries to take the telescope to a better place, and came back after one hour. Around midnight the moon was high up and about 75% full. We could see the distortions in the air, but it was still fun. At that time, the planets were all out of our line of sight because of nearby buildings.
Then we tried to align the telescope again, and this time it was spot on. The telescope was pointing flawlessly, and it skewed to keep the objects centered. Fantastic stuff! We then took the tour, and by far the best we managed to see in those terrible conditions was the Orion Nebula.
The Orion Nebula, Hubble Telescope
Image Source: NASA
We took a final look at the moon and called it a night!
Site: Home, Santa Maria da Feira
Conditions: Around 1ºC, 90% humidity, lots of light pollution
Equipment: Celestron Nexstar 8SE
Best observation subject: Orion Nebula
