First Light with new telescope

So I was in Dallas/Ft.Worth area this week for family and photography business. I stopped in at Fry's Electronics on I-635 (I think..) and I bought a little telescope I've had my eye on for a while, the Celestron 76mm International Year of Astronomy (IYA2009) first scope. Telescope is what I call a baby (maybe a premature baby) dobsonian telescope that retails for $49.99. I couldn't resist. The telescope is tiny pointed a zenith it sits about a foot and a half tall.

I'll post some more details about this little scope later. But this post is about the first light with this scope. Today (July 3, 09) after driving the 5 or so hours back to San Antonio I decided to get this thing out and take it for a tour of the light polluted sky of San Antonio.

The telescope comes with 2 eyepieces and I took the 20mm out for tonight. My object of choice for first light was the moon. I needed something easy to spot since the first scope doesn't have a finder (an optional accessory kit is $20 more). It wasn't too hard to align the mini telescope to the lunar surface. The first thing I noticed about this telescope was how wide the field of view was. I was able to take in the whole moon with a 9mm eyepeice. I got some decent views with the the supplied 20mm eyepiece but I got some slight blue ghosting at the edge of the moon. This isn't the worst view I've seen in a beginning telescope however when I put in my Orion ED-2 18mm eyepeice it really took the views up a notch. I was rather pleased with the views in this scope. I also got to take in Jupiter. I didn't see any details of the planet but I could see a line of moons.

I have some big plans for this little telescope.. more on that later.