Dear Bob,

You gave me a clue as to the source of my error. I corrected for the magnification twice, once to calculate the actual field of view and once to calculate the size of my new little orange friend.

Oops. Guess you're not supposed to do that.

I have been tooling around the galaxy quite a bit, just over the last couple of weekends since I got the SC. I've been looking south (because of Mars). I've "GOneTO" Neptune and Uranus and was pretty satisfied with what I saw.

I do think I did a good job with alignment. It was an iteritive process. I used mapquest.com to get my exact longitude and latitude (that in itself was an iteritive process). Then I slewed to Arcturus and centered it in the finderscope. I centered it with the 26 mm Plossl, that came with the SC, then with the 18 mm Radian and finally with the 4.8 mm Nagler. I did the same with Antares.

We spent much too much time enjoying the Moon on Sunday night. It focussed sharp as a tack.

I need to spend some more time with the operating manual and with some books and magazines to find the objects you've mentioned. I've always wanted a good scope and I've been reading a lot over the last four or five years; I've developed a fairly extensive library. Finally, with the EP offer that Meade has, I decided to make the investment.

Thank you very much for your response. I've noticed that you help a lot of us 'newbies'. It's people like you that make the hobby what it is.

Hope we both have clear skies this weekend.

Thanks again.

gbmich