Oh happy days!

At long last, after a month of recovering from a damp disaster in Texas, we're back in our house, the furniture has arrived, new TV is setup, and my new to me ETX-70 arrived! First light was Jupiter and at least four of his moons. We were a bit late getting back from the store to get a new LCD HDTV (woo woo) and Venus had already slipped behind the neighbor's house into the haze. Jupiter was nice though, and the view through the Meade Super Plossel eyepiece that came with the ETX was clear and sharp with good contrast although it seemed a bit fuzzy at the far edges. There were a number of pinpoint stars in the field with Jupiter so that was a good sign. I haven't had it long enough to become familiar with the goto feature so I just unlocked the OTA and manually lined it up with Jupiter. It wasn't all that difficult to find even without the aid of a finder. The addition of a red dot finder will be a high priority I'm sure. Overall, the experience was similar to an earlier one I had a few years ago with an ETX-90 at a local star party here in the RGV. A teacher had brought one from her school but wasn't sure how to use it so we just unlocked it, found the moon, and admired the craters. This little guy should be lots of fun even with our local light polution. But in the meantime I'm going to watch a little tube on my other new toy.