Marvin Jenkins

Going to add my photo of what I thought was an EQ2.

Mine is an Orion USA that was bought as a bundle with a five inch newt. 
The 5” newt is now my grab and go outfit on an AZ5.

I tried to make this tripod and head work. Filled the legs with dry sand, shimmed all the pivot points, but it seems the wobble is in the mount itself.

I am going to mount a box on mine to house my laptop. The “thing” will set next to my imaging rig.

As an equatorial mount it is very bad. It cannot take much of a payload that makes it worthwhile. EQs are  primarily for AP and this just isn’t sufficient.

As a beginner mount it served me well. However that old adage about no mount no scope has not gone away.

Marv

ISBN 978-1-529-32766-3

If you like the subject of meteorites and how they have explained a big part in the formation of our solar system then you need this book.

I have spent three years on the web looking at incomprehensible science papers and incredibly old incomprehensible science documents to make sense of the falls that are catalogued on our planet.

This book explains in one great read all my pain. I thank you Tim Gregory.

Just want to say I bought it in Waterstones at face value. I have no connection with the author or publisher.

Marv

I know we are here to help, but have we frightened off the op?

I would just say go outside on a clear night. Put out your setup with the north leg facing north ie the leg that is inline with the azimuth adjustment nobs.

Adjust your elevation for your place on this planet using the angle guide on the side of the mount.

loosen your clutches a bit and go star gazing. Having an EQ mount is not a restriction for star gazing.

If however you want to polar align accurately to use goto to track objects, and then the next big leap chuck on a camera then you will need to follow the previous advice.

I would say get out there and use it manually for a short while, then once you are confident move to getting accurate polar alignment and all that will lead to.

Marv

Meteorite number three, the collection is growing. Finally a Campo! Small but pleasingly heavy and lovely in the hand.

I have a suspicion that an etched slice of an iron is coming my way for my birthday early December. Fingers crossed.

I now have an Iron. A Pallasite and a Chondrite so that is the three main types covered.

Marv

6 hours ago, wulfrun said:

Personal choice, some folk use one or the other and some (like myself) like both. A Telrad or similar gets you close to target or to the nearest naked-eye-visible star, then you use a RACI to hone in on the exact point you're after. The RACI allows you to see fainter stuff, the Telrad does not.

EDIT:  the green-circled, white thing in the picture above shouldn't be there at all, it'll prevent the black bit (dovetail) engaging with your mount. (I think!)

Just as note. That white bit bolted to long black dove tail bar is a small dovetail bar that comes with the mount.

No idea why it would be bolted to the long dovetail. It gives zero movement backwards or forwards for balancing the ota. I use mine as mini dovetail to use a dslr on the mount without any scope.

Marv

On 17/11/2022 at 22:56, Dark Adaptation said:

Ooh, that's nice...does the Earth look a bit distorted to anyone else?

It’s not distorted! Everyone knows it is flat! 
The reason things seem round is because of the camera lense. 
If they made oblong camera lenses then all would appear correct and we could all throw away our coma correctors.

Marv

Looks like your good to go then.

Edit one is on the dec I think. 

Also the turn screw knob that holds the OTAs dovetail in the clamp is missing. Also the slow motion controls are not there.

The spreader plate for the legs is missing as well.

6 hours ago, Adam J said:

My reaction is that if you think you need a 5m usb cable for a guide camera, you are doing it all wrong. You need a usb hub on the scope. 

I am doing it all wrong. No money and trying to do AP with a EQ5😂

Actually I have just tried to use my ww2 enigma machine. I think I know where you are coming from.👍🙏

Are you speaking a language that no one understands?

I understood the last paragraph about chucking away my existing cables as they are crap. Which brings me right back to the beginning……

M

Just a quick correction. The quote about Halton Chip Arp is meant to read…. that the author of the book says he is the finest observer. The author being Patrick Moore.

Very interesting. I note your final paragraph. It is interesting to me that I owned and read the book ‘BANG’ SPM Lintott and May, before the older book mentioned in my original post.

In the older book SPM clearly states Vesto Slipher as the father of expansion. 
Halton Chip ARP is quoted as saying HE is the finest observer and his observations cannot be doubted!

No mention of Slipher and Arp in ‘BANG’

M

2 minutes ago, Gfamily said:

Yes, that's what we now know that's what he was doing; but the current interpretation wasn't unambiguous at that time. 

Also, the presence of objects showing high red shifts isn't definitive proof of an expanding universe - it wasn't until Hubble could use Leavitt's discovery to determine the distance to the receding external galaxies, and thus come up with the Hubble-Lemaître Law 

I am totally confused by your entire statement. That first paragraph is a giant problem. It just doesn’t make any sense:

This is before the Period luminosity law for Cepheid variables as out lined by Henrietta Leavitt.

How can Slipher observe external galaxies. Come to the conclusion from his observations that everything is rushing away from everything else! 
When he was observing these external galaxies between 1912 and 1920?

4 minutes ago, Gfamily said:

Until about 1920 one of the great debates in Astronomy was whether the 'spiral nebulae' were objects contained within the Milky Way galaxy, with the alternative view being that they were external objects - galaxies in their own right. 

So, although Slipher may have identified that the nebulae had significant radial velocities; it wasn't definitively clear to astronomers that they were at particularly high distances.

It was the  work of Henrietta Leavitt to determine the Period Luminosity law for Cepheid variables (and the bigger telescope) that allowed Hubble to determine their distances, and thus demonstrate that they were external galaxies rather than part of our own. 

I understand what you are saying with regard to your explanation.

However, Patrick Moore clearly states that Slipher was making observations of external galaxies and gave first proof that they were racing away from us.

On a serious note I must have been unlucky or absent minded with regard to  Slipher. It just came as such a surprise to read that one paragraph in book from the 1980s.

Another surprise recently is reading a very up to date book about astronomy using the big scopes over the last 100 years. Not a mention of Vera C Rubin but I found myself saying “Who is Vera C Rubin” after reading lots of books about the history of astronomy.

Still haven’t found a book dedicated to her and her achievements.

2 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

My own reading of astronomy history makes it very clear that Hubble continued the observations of Vesto Melvin Slipher, who is regularly cited in astronomy history. To be honest, almost everything I've read on the matter makes this clear, so I think you've been unlucky in your choice of texts if you have only just met him. You're certainly right to note his contribution. However, the story is convoluted because Hubble was happy to ride the tide of fame which followed Einstein's interpretation of the linear distance-velocity relation Hubble discovered. But we must moderate our view of Hubble as the the 'discoverer' of the expansion since he never entirely believed it - or never even believed it at all.

It is for professional historians of science to get to the bottom of all this but my own suspicion is that much of the story hangs on Hubble's troubled personality. He craved adulation and spent his scientific life searching for discoveries that would immortalize him. When Slipher ran out of aperture, I think Hubble spied an opportunity and went for it with the Hooker. And I suspect that his reluctance to accept the expansion of the universe as the explanation for his distance-velocity discovery was that this explanation wasn't his but Einstein's. He hoped to find some 'new physics' to explain the phenomenon (as did Fritz Zwicky with his 'tired light' hypothesis.) Maybe the last knockings of this quest for a new physics found their final expression in Halton Arp, who continued to challenge the redshift-distance theory to the end.

Anyway, I hope that all readers of astronomy history agree that the expanding universe has two fathers, Slipher and Einstein. Hubble and Humason (don't under-estimate Humason) might be considered the midwives. 

Olly

I agree with nearly everything you said but how dare you say anything about Chip Arp. 
The Patrick Moore book noted at the beginning of this thread clearly says Arp is one of the finest observers in history and his observations cannot be questioned.

In all truth we are dealing with scientific discoveries by human beings. The latter part of that statement means anything is possible. Does that mean Penzias an Wilson are wrong?

Oh no what have I said😱

I do remember hearing a commentary for a cricket match a few years ago where that very subject came up. 
It may have been a West Indian Cricketer that commented that the invention of the Tungsten filliment made the lightbulb workable and how the history books do not mention this man at all.