Hi David, I own two Meade scopes. The first one was a 5" with a non-motorized equatorial mount. Recently I purchased an 8" scope with the go-to feature. Although the 8" has better optics and lets me see better images, the initial setup requirements (alignment, centering two stars, etc...) is very time consuming. It wouldn't be bad, but most of the time the autostar doesn't work correctly. Even though it says the alignment worked, I'll tell it to go to an easy to find object (Jupiter, the moon) and it doesn't even come close. I've spent a lot of time lately trying to tweak the scope settings in an attempt to improve the go-to performance. It's a very involved process requiring incremental steps of alignment. I hope at the end of it to have a scope that actually works, but at the moment the pain of setting everything up only to not have it work at all is just not worth it. Even thought the view isn't as good, I find myself pulling out the older scope more often just because it is so much easier to get going, plus it forces me to follow star charts and star hop in order to find something. It is also much more satisfying to find an obscure object by performing a diligent search. The only feature of the go-to scope I really like is the motor, which tracks objects once they are found. So adding a motor to my equatorial mount probably would've been better than getting the full-blown autostar scope. On Fri, 2004-05-07 at 15:44, David Trevino wrote:
I would like to ask those that have GO-TO scopes their opinion on them. Looks too me that one could spend more time observing that trying to find objects. (although some argue that finding them is half the fun).
Anyway, here is my train of thought: Last year I bought a 4.5" dobsonian. It is not the greatest, but some nights the viewing is good from my driveway, enough to keep me interested (and better eyepieces helped tremendously). But my greatest frustration is trying to keep it pointing in the right direction. I can find planets and other objects just fine at low/medium power, but when I get to high power, it is really hard to keep them in view. (the mount may not be as good as it could be since a little bump or push when trying to focus is enough to move it off target).
Anyway, I see that Walmart has the Meade DS-80AT for under $250. I know it is smaller aperture than my current scope, but I am atracted by its computer controls. If it indeed can find and track objects as described, then I can spend my time learning how they actually look (most photographs are taken with larger scopes so they don't look the same). I am not worried about the aperture since I am in John and Lisa's telescope class, so later this summer I'll have a 12" scope. In this case the Meade would aid in pointing me in the right direction, so I can recognize my target in the finder for the larger scope.
Any comments or ideas on this or other affordable computerized mounts will be greatly appreciated.
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