y brother is coming out tomorrow. First problem – no good restaurants open on Sunday night (I thought Orlando was hipper than this). But before he came out I wanted to fiddle with my new laser sight.

Some assembly required. Not too bad. And once I got the entire scope set up in the backyard, I tried to shoot at the second-biggest object in the sky – Jupiter. This took some doing – I lined it up with the old sight and eyeballed the gas giant with my most generous lens. Once I got it lined, I dropped off the old sight, installed the new one. Then, checking for airplanes, I tried to line it up. So it was back and forth for a while, with me doubting this would work. Finally I just started to drill myself, lining up on brighter stars (the big dipper was a fav), then seeing how close I came. Then I found out I could see the laser through the lens, actually adjusting it to the center of the lensed view. After that, pretty simple.

Still, against the moon, it can get a bit lost.

Outside of hardware games, I did do a lot of time on the moon tonight. Located the Messier craters – always wanted to see them. Looked for M81 and 82 but didn’t find them. Even with the laser, there were just not enough secondary stars around Ursa Major for me to locate it. Did some blind shots, guestimating it in with the laser sight, but didn’t locate anything. Of course, downtown, on a moony night, not much chance.

Still, it was more of a relaxing evening than anything serious. Just swapped lenses, looked at this and that, and kept the laser off when aircraft were anywhere near.

>>>MY BOOKS FOR SALE HERE!<<<