Failure is Always an Option

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Where to begin? The evening of May 21st was exceptional for seeing. It's just too bad that I didn't see much of anything that night. I couldn't get good polar alignment which means the telescope couldn't track a target if and when I found it.

Hope springs eternal. Then (mostly) everything takes a wrong turn.

I can rule out problems with the equipment. It was all me. The Celestron CGX mount tracks like a bloodhound when it's properly aligned. I just couldn't get a good two-star alignment for the life of me. Part of the problem is that the telescope never ends up in the same spot when I roll it out of the garage. Each session has to begin with leveling and a new alignment.

A pier would solve many of these problems, but I'm not keen on leaving my telescope out by the street, where I have the largest patch of sky. A space in the backyard would be ideal, but we have a nice canopy of trees back there. My wife objects to cutting them down (yes, I like them too).

Then there were problems with my imaging software. I was trying a new program, but I couldn't get an image from the camera. Was it a hardware issue? Nope. I switched software and an image pops up. I'm determined to get his software working, so I'm going to spend some quality time practicing in the daylight on a distant object. 

It got to a point that I just looked at the moon & Jupiter visually. Wow! Details of the moon's surface were sharp & clear. Jupiter and its moons were brilliant and I could clearly make out the cloud bands. Sorry, no pictures though.

This blurry image of the moon is the only evidence that I managed to point the telescope at anything that night and the camera was working.

The point of all this is that nothing is ever guaranteed to go right during an evening session. I'm an amateur and this is a hobby - sometime an extremely frustrating hobby. My goal is to inventory the things I do wrong, find solutions and get back out there on the next clear night. Because when things go right, the rewards are worth the trials and tribulations.