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Hello from the Southern Sierra!


Aschro

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Hi everyone, I'm pretty new to astronomy though I've had an interest in it for a while.  I've had a Celestron Astromaster 114 for a while, but just got a Celestron 8SE.  Struggling to get the darn thing to align, which now of course I realize is not so unusual!  Easy enough to find the moon, Jupiter, and Venus without it, so until I figure that bit out I'll have plenty to keep me busy.   :smiley: Anyhow, I live in the Tehachapi Mountains in California, and we're blessed with fairly dark skies here.  So, I look forward to learning a lot more in the coming months and years!

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Hi Aschro,

Good for you, but still does not stop you from posting a new thread, cos I bet someone will have had the same experience. No hope of a session here its blowing a hoolie and cloudy!!!. I used to have a 10" lx 200, the first time I took it out scrobbling underneath the mount for the lock nut then in slow motion watched the tube rotate in the forks and hit the grass.....good job it was built like a tank.... one question later and the mounting assistant bought :grin:

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Thanks all. Tried it again tonight and had better luck. Also found a good thread for newbies with 8SE's, so that helped. I think there are a few more things I can try. Seems particularly important to have a good power source, and the 8 AA's don't seem to fit the bill.

James, the trade-off is that I have an hour commute to work! Oh well, nothing's perfect. =) No matter how good your skies are I think the grass is always greener down the way. I've been thinking of a Death Valley camping trip this fall - supposed to be incredible skies out there!

Damnut, set up my scope out on a hill tonight amidst clumps of grass and whatnot, and tripped on a clump and almost took out the scope!

Good night,

Alex

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Thanks all! Dana, we're more Dodgers/Angels down here. ;)

Very cool article Druid. Appreciate it. Haven't had a blizzard in our neck of the woods for awhile... lengthy drought unfortunately!

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Hi again everyone - turns out it was the power.  I'm surprised Celestron has gotten away with selling these things without AC power!  The 8 AA batteries did NOT do the trick, even though I swapped them twice.  I had bizarre reversals/inversions when I managed to get it to align.  It though Polaris was in the southern sky for crying out loud.  With the AC power adaptor (stolen from an old hard drive that matched the specs closely enough i.e,. 12v, 2.5A, the motors performed perfectly (and quickly!)  It never sounded quite so good as when I had batteries in it.  Celestron, would it kill you to add an AC adapter and perhaps a Li-Ion batter pack and ditch the AA scheme altogether?  It made for a very frustrating first few days.  And yet... still... I'm hooked!!   :grin:

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