Just recently bought the 3rd telescope I've ever had - a 10" dobsonian. And I've just seen the SMC for the first time in my life. What a wonderful experience.

Previous scopes were an old 6" equatorial mounted Tasco reflector, a 125mm Meade Goto, and now this SkyWatcher 250mm. Feels lovely using a fully manual scope. Just me and some levers. But man oh man, the moon is too annoying. I'm in Adelaide suburbs so not particularly dark but still it's just washing out everything tonight.

Stupid moon /dumb rant

The complete full moon came up over a ridge as we drove North, 150km between towns, in the East Kimberley.

A welcome sight to break up the drive.

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I know what you mean about the 10inch dobsonian too. I set up one with an auto tracking mount to show Jupiter and moons, at an open-night in a fairly dark-sky location.

It's a bit of a rush to know it's just a few compact pieces of glass and mirror allowing you to view Jupiter in detail.

Is it possible to manually track Jupiter or Saturn with levers? That would be pretty skilful.

The timing on this post is funny to me, living in North America, since we just had a 96% lunar eclipse last night

Smc?

Small magnanellic cloud?

Sorry yes that's what I meant