westmarch

What a beautiful piece of restoration work, a fitting tribute to a classic piece of engineering. John

Shane, welcome back. Your posts on equatorial platforms were pinned on my desktop as a tutting reminder that I needed to get my finger out! Best thing I ever did! John

I frequently see posts that decry the use of apps or astronomy VDUs on the basis that any display, no matter how dim or red, will ruin your night vision. Presumably those who use print outs need a red light to see them. Has anyone conducted a rigorous assessment, with a photometer, to compare the light output of the two methods? Or is this a bit like wine tasting? John

Great report and love your star hopping skills. It's something you never need to reboot, upgrade or polar align. John

To try to inject a note of hope into this, is it not likely that imaging software will evolve to remove the noise of satellites from images. Is it not just about software consulting a database of satellite position and time? John

My Lightbridge 250 Truss Dob has grown old with me and has had its own surgical modifications. The grab handle was the first but the home made shroud, dew shroud, RACI finder, red dot finder, bike chain counterweight, fan battery mount, eyepiece case holder and equatorial platform have followed as tinkering days outnumbered viewing nights! John

Alternatively, attach a heavy biker’s chain to the rear end of the dob. The lower the scope elevation, the greater the amount of chain suspended to balance the increased moment from the eyepiece end. John

I wish you many happy hours using it. John

Congrats on your 100th edition. Always a great heads up on what’s happening visually. John

Hi and welcome to the forum. John

Hi there, welcome to the forum. Dark skies. John

Sorry you are having such a hard time with it. In older ETX models there is an additional requirement for the home position. Do you first release the horizontal lock and rotate the scope anticlockwise until it reaches the hard stop and then rotate clockwise until the fork arm aligns with the control panel on the side of the scope? The only other thing I can suggest is Does it align in Alt/Az? If not, it may be that the batteries need replacing - alignment is very sensitive to voltage drop. John

Hi there, I have an ETX 90EC that I use as a grab and go, although not in equatorial mode. A couple of points: Did you first, choose “Polar” from the “Setup: Telescope: Mount” menu in the hand controller? If you did, then here is a fairly detailed setup guide: http://www.weasner.com/etx/ref_guides/polar_align.html It goes into a lot of detail about finding the correct North Celestial Pole alignment (which is near to but not identical with the Pole Star position). Good Luck! John

Hi there, welcome to the forum. Clear skies. John

Sorry all, didn’t mean to get anyone into trouble. John