I took out the 4″ tonight, and invited a few of my neighbors over for a look. We looked at Venus and the Moon, and in spite of some pesky clouds, the seeing was excellent. I was able to push the scope up to 200X (a 6mm eyepiece with a Barlow).

My neighbors are old farts like me, but not one had ever looked through any kind of telescope before. They were like little kids, oohing and ahhing, sometimes squealing with delight.

They seemed particularly fascinated by how fast the objects moved across the field of view due to the rotation of the Earth, especially at the higher magnifications. “It moves so fast!” I showed them how to track by just twisting the R.A. knob, and it just tickled the hell out of them.

There will never be an app for that.