Monday, May 12, 2008

A Good Look at the Moon

I've had my telescope for a few weeks now and before tonight, I haven't seen anything except the bat house that's on the side of the barn. I struggled with setup the first few evenings and then the rain moved in.
Tonight I looked up in the evening sky and there was a half moon shining brightly. I pulled out the telescope and lined it towards the heavens but nothing. I focused pointed, moved, focused, and pointed...nothing. I squatted down and tried to aim it like a gun. Nothing. I remembered that there were two viewing lenses. One is much stronger than the other. I thought the short lens would be for objects that were closer and the longer one for things farther off. Wrong. When I looked at the book, I had it backwards. I slipped in the long lens and bingo. I saw the moon. At first, it was so bright that it almost hurt to look at it but as my eyes adjusted it became easier. The face of the moon looked like it had a bad case of acne. You could see craters and crevices. I wanted to try and see some stars, but a high altitude haze moved in which made the night sky look as if it were wearing a veil. Oh well, I'll give it another shot tomorrow night.

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