It was just my birthday.  I got a new telescope.  It is a Maksutov-Cassegrain 90 mm reflecting scope, and the coolest part is that it has GPS.

When it came in two boxes and I laid all the pieces out on the floor, I knew I would be challenged.  Putting things together is not my strong point and the way the instructions were written it presumed that you knew something about telescopes, which I did not.  But after a few tries my telescope looked like the picture on the instructions.

Now I had to program the GPS.  Not too hard, I thought, once I determined my exact latitude and longitude, where due south was (azimuth of 180 degrees, for the uninitiated), and whether I was ahead or behind of Universal Time (UT),and if so by how much (300 minutes, it turns out).   Now I was ready. 

Finally there was a clear sky and I dragged my telescope out on our deck in the freezing cold.  I found due south with a compass and knew that Jupiter was out that night.  I selected Jupiter on my hand control, but the telescope did not move.  It was not working.  Upon further examination I realized I only put batteries in one side of the battery pack.  I hadn't noticed there were two sides.  No problem, I would just plug it into to an outlet.  

 I tried again, and the device told me that Jupiter would not rise for another four hours.  I randomly tried another planet, Venus, and suddenly the mount whirred and turned and tilted the scope - right towards the back of the house into my dining room.  I was pretty sure Venus was not in there.  After a few more tries the freezing cold dark night got the best of me and I decided to give it go another night.

The next morning I examined my telescope and found that the date, time and latitude and longitude I had programmed the day before had not been saved.  No wonder Venus was in my kitchen.

I have tried again, and without much success.  Stars are tiny in the sky and hard to pinpoint with accuracy.  But there are over 3,000 stars, constellations, galaxies, asteriods programmed into my GPS, some with names like Syrma and Zaniah, or Polaris and Kaus Borealis.  There are double stars too.   I hope I can figure this out and I can see them.  The moon has not been out the past week, but it is coming back - that will be easy to find.   Then I will try Venus and Jupiter again.