Last weekend was the first time I was looking through my telescope. I had to drive 2 Hrs to get to a star party. It was fun looking at the amazing stuff people had. I looked at Jupiter(my first object through my Zhumell 10 inch) and the Orion nebule.
I knew all my theoretical stuff.. how to read a sky map? What is altitude and Azmuth? How to focus on an object and things like that... but I bet there are tons of other things that you will learn when you are actually operating the scope. Here are a few tips for people who are looking through their telescopes for the first time:
1. To start with... Always, colliminate your scope before you start. That is because when you are setting up your scope(or during logistics), chances are that the collimination is lost.
2. Find your object using the "finder scope". Next...start with the lowest magnification(say 35mm). Bring the object of observation to the center of the screen and adjuct the focus using your eyepiece. You could now, increase the magnification to the next level(say 12.5mm)... your view through the scope might not be in the center now and might be blurry. You now need to get it to the center of the screen again and focus it. You are now ready to increase it to the next magnification(say 6mm or 4mm). You need to now again bring it back to the center of the screen and re-focus it.
Note: One important thing here is to bring the image to the near perfect center of your view. Because when you go from magnification 12.5mm to 6mm or 4 mm... you are going from 96X magnification to 300X magnification. So, if the image is not in the near perfect center, you might loose the image in the 300X view.
