First light with the AD10

I finished putting together my Apertura AD10 today.  Assembly was very straightforward and the instructions are extremely clear.

One of the nylon screws on the finder was snapped off in the box, so I replaced both adjustment screws with 8-32 stainless steel allen head screws.

After assembly, I tried to adjust the collimation, but I found the included laser collimator was extremely out of adjustment.  I set it in a jig (piece of wood with four nails in it)

When turning the collimator on the nail heads and projecting the laser across the garage, it made a pretty large circle, over 6".  Problem was, as I was trying to adjust it using the three set screws on the side, the laser kept dying.  I believe it's just dead batteries.  By turning it off and back on multiple times, I was eventually able to get it pretty well adjusted.  The bad batteries meant I wasn't able to adjust the scope much though.

I pointed the scope at the farthest away trees that I could see from my location and aligned the finder.

Once it got dark, I dragged the scope out to the driveway to take a test drive.  WOW!  I didn't have any sort of observing plan for the night, just get out and look at some stuff.

First up was the moon.  Today it was first quarter.  I started with the 30mm SuperView.  The moon spanned about half the diameter of the eyepiece.  It was extremely sharp, although too bright to view for long.  Next I switched to the 9mm Plossl with the moon filter attached.  Very nice.  Extremely clear views and just the right brightness.  The dual speed focuser really makes it easy to dial in the focus.  The 9mm in the Barlow wasn't as nice due to seeing conditions.

After a little while I swung over to the Orion nebula M42.  Even with all of the lights from the neighbors' houses, I could easily see quite a bit of detail in the nebula through the 30mm.  I switched to the 9mm again.  What a great view.  

The kids came out and wanted to look at Jupiter, so we watched that for a little while in both eyepieces.  It was near the zenith though, so trying to follow it was a bit tricky.  I'm not used to the dob mount yet.

After that I went back to M42, but seeing was getting worse and the 9mm wouldn't focus well.  Instead I barlowed the 30mm and enjoyed that view.  While looking at M42, I even saw a satellite pass right through the middle of it.  

I tried to find a few other objects that I identified in Skeye on my phone, but I couldn't locate them, so I just panned around the sky for a little while.  I need to learn to read sky maps and star hop.

Next time I'll try setting up in the back yard where there is much less light from the neighbors.