Just getting started with astronomy.
I finally got a break and 2 to 3 hours of clear sky (besides the town lights ). I could tell it was a decent night as the university observatory 2 miles away had its green laser up and running all night.
My first night out 10 days ago, I focused on what I could see from my small field of view in the backyard. Leo was easy to spot and I focused on finding M66. I could barely see it but now I have learned where to find it so that's something (my favorite thing so far isn't so much the views in the SCT, it's the hunt to find objects and remember each path)... That night, I only used my EQ35 manually.
Tonight, I decided to try polar alignment first. I think I got it ok, just ok, as 2 hours later, polaris had moved away from the circles a bit. But the tracking was pleasant for visual observing. Something weird happened with the synscan. I tried to adjust my lat/lon from 41.44 and 111.48 to 41.73 and 111.80. Synscan would not validate the new values. It didn't like the ".73" and ".80". No idea... if someone knows, feel free to let me know
Anyway, tonight, ursa major was almost straight up so I figure there would be something to learn and hunt around it. First was M51. It took me some time to find the most practical way to it, but it worked. It was pretty faint with my 25mm plossl and I could see (very faint) both M51 and NGC 5195 in my 12mm unbranded plossl. I was happy, I had found a new galaxy .
Next I decided to go visit Mizar and Alcor, which I knew nothing about until I zoomed on them in Stellarium. They looked interesting so I went there. I could see very the double star in Mizar. I realized then that another galaxy wasn't far away, M101. Magnitude was slightly better than M51, so I thought it should be visible. The path through 81, 83, 84, 86 ursae majoris seemed obvious. From 86, a three star line would give me a visual to locate M101 on the opposite side of 86. Well... I looked and looked again. Nothing, not even a tiny bit of a faint object. I'm not sure I understand since I could see M51 earlier (I even went back there 3 times for the fun of it). Any idea?
Anyway, pretty good night without Netflix or rain!
Next time I'd like to do star alignment. I tried the first star tonight but synscan kept giving me stars to low on the horizon (I'm in Utah, with some mountains toward the East) or obstructed by trees. Not sure I'll be able to that from the backyard...
Ben