Houston...We Have Alignment

Hallelujah! The Celestron 9000 is one step closer to stargazing! The finder scope is finally aligned with the main scope! Hoping for clear skies tonight!

Backstory on the scope is this: BV has a pretty swanky Celestron GT telescope, affectionately nick-named - The Celestron 9000. It has been residing in storage and I thought that with some effort and work it could be properly calibrated and aligned, affording me the opportunity to see some pretty spectacular things in the sky.

Later that evening our hard work and persistence paid off! Jupiter has shone extremely bright in the night sky for a few months now. BV used the finder scope to find Jupiter and we held our breath while we looked through the main scope...

WOW! There it was...the giant planet, Jupiter. It appeared a bit bigger than a pencil eraser and its atmospheric rings were clearly visible. We will be exploring getting another hand control for the telescope so that we can utilize its 'tour of the skies' feature. Apparently, the hand control that came with this unit had been mistakenly discarded. A new one costs $150. Hopefully, Celestron will respond to the question of whether or not the hand control is necessary to control telescope or can we load and use the available laptop software.