After much contemplation and procrastination I have finally joined the ‘Dob People’. Although some say, “Kerry it’s not just a dob it’s a LIGHTBRIDGE” :). I was thinking of waiting till next year for this purchase but with the rebate offer and lower prices I figured now was my chance to make the leap and purchase my first ‘Faint Fuzzy Interceptor (FFI)’. After a few set backs with a couple of missing attachment bolts and a red dot finder that didn’t want to collimate (actually it’s still not collimating properly but I know of a possible fix), I was finally able to get it all together.

The 12″ LB collimation process was a little daunting for me and I kept thinking that I should have payed attention when Steve was collimating his 16″(aka the GWS). After a little under an hour of reading the manual, figuring out the laser collimator, installing Bob’s Knobs and fiddling with lots of screws, I managed to collimate it well enough… I think. I took some advice about labelling the struts so that I didn’t have to keep collimating everytime I had to reassemble the scope. Later in the evening I took a peek outside and noticed the viel of cirrus covering the entire sky. I could barely see the stars… but there was the moon. Yippee it was a go for a first light on the moon. I was surprisingly able to manage partially dissasembling the scope in the dining room, carrying it down to the driveway, and reassembling it all with not much time and effort. Once the scope was cooled down I was greated with an absolutely spectacular (but hazy) view of our nearest neighboor. No photograph to date has provided me with such detail. I popped in the 10mm plossl and WOW!!! The terminator especially was a sight to see. Afterwards I scooted over to the only other object that I could see through the clouds, Mars. That was another sight to behold. With just the provided Meade 4000 26mm 2″ eyepiece I was able to see a hint of some dark features on the surface. Was I dreaming? With all my years in astronomy I have never seen any real details on the surface (pretty sad but true). When I magnified the view with my 10mm plossl I was able to confirm it. A little later the cirrus thinned out a bit more and I was able to scan around. I was very impressed with how sharp the star field looked even through the provided 2″ eyepiece. The stars and clusters were lacking some luster through the clouds but they were still very nice to look at. I can’t wait to take this scope out again, hopefully under better conditions.

KerryLH