Telescope assembled

As I mentioned in the beginning of the month, my girlfriend got me a telescope for Christmas. I've never had a telescope before and all my stargazing have been confined to my high-zoom camera and standard binoculars.

Because of illness and generally being busy I haven't had the time to assemble it but today I decided to do it. Of course it's overcast once again but at least the scope is ready now for cloudless nights.
And I can finally call myself an amateur astronomer :-)

 

It's a Sky-Watcher Capricorn-70 refracting telescope with an aperture of 70mm and a focal length of 900mm.
It is a lens-based telescope (and therefore doesn't use mirrors) and is suited best for viewing the Moon, the planets, comets and other fairly nearby objects (or at least visually 'small' objects such as single stars, double stars etc.). Of course it can be used to observe distant galaxies and nebulae as well but large apertures (which are required for faint objects) are cheaper in reflecting telescopes (which are mirror-based).

If you want a brief explanation of telescopes and advice on buying your own Thunderf00t has posted a small (7 minutes) video title 'Which telescope to buy?'.

I'm looking forward to using it once the sky clears up (and I move out of the city) and hopefully I'll be able to take a few pictures and post them on the blog.