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Hello from Glasgow (well, close)

Murray Carr

By Murray Carr
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Murray Carr

Murray Carr

Posted
Posted

Hi. I'm a new member who knows absolutely nothing about astronomy (although unlike 'Sherlock' I do know the planets revolve around the sun). Deciding that at the young age of 60 I should do something about this serious gap in my knowledge I splashed out and bought a second hand Meade Staravigator Audiostar Reflecting telescope. I then waited a few months until the rain stopped and ventured outside full of hope and expectations. After a few attempts to align the telscope and frequent readings of the manual I almost admit defeat. I seem to follow the steps carefully - set location, date, time. Level the scope (although I find the small compass with the bubble a bit iffy as the bubble relies on the compass being set perfectly level in the first place - perhaps that's not the way to do the levelling bit?). Set the scope to North (although so far I've only used the compass to do this). I then try the Easy alignment. The scope moves to the brightest star (2 days ago in was Vega) and .......nothing. Not exactly blank sky, but certainly no particularly bright star. So what do I centre the scope on? Take a guess. Then go to step 2. The scope moves to the next star (can't remember exactly which one, and again ... nothing. Again I take a guess and compelte the alignment. I then tell the scope to goto Jupiter and it's not even close (fortunately I can tell which light Jupiter is). Perhaps I should train the drive every time I use the scope? Perhaps I should try and align the scope to true north? Hopefully some kind soul will advise me as I'd hate to spedn the rest of my days just looking at the moon! Thanks in anticipation.

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dtr42

dtr42

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Posted

hi murray welcome to the forum , could be a couple of things.1, is your finder scope set with the main mirror ,you should set scope up in the day and look at a distant object ,church tower for example then look through finder scope [it should be looking at the same object if not you need to adjust the finder using the 3 grub screws . 2 , set scope roughly north then set correct date time [it may be american format month/day/year] time and no daylight savings atm goto first star musually vega hih in the south west/ west then whatever the 2nd is should be close use the arrows on remote then press centred should be good to go . there's an astronomy club in glasgow who has a star in botanics on the 18th dec in botanic gardens [costs£4] you could take scope there to get advice also central scotland astronomers have regular but unplanned meetings near livingston there forums here http://scottishastronomers.com http://theasg.org.uk/botanics.php is the botanics site

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JamesM

JamesM

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Posted

Hi Murray and welcome to the forum. I have had a look at the instructions here and it would appear that the set up procedure is divided into two sections, 'initializing' and the 'alignment' procedures. From your description above, it is difficult to know exactly what it is you have inputted at each step. For example, have you initialized the scope as you only mention alignment above? When you input the date, did you type Month, Day and Year (U.S format) rather than as we normally do in the U.K namely, Day, Month and Year. You mention above about setting the scope to North, I assume you are talking about its home position but here there are two options, True North or Magnetic North - you don't mention which one and both are dependent on correctly setting the alt-azimuth home position. These goto systems are great and fairly straightforward to set up but if you make a mistake on any one question, the set up configuration will produce unpredictable outcomes. In order to provide some useful advice it will be useful to know what answers you have given at each stage.

As this is the welcome section, can I suggest that you post the above question on the "Beginners" forum and in particular, the "Getting Started Equipment Help and Advice" section as you are more likely to receive some technical help from members who use the same kit.

Clear skies

James

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PaulMakin

PaulMakin

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Posted

Hi Murray,

I'm Glasgow-based myself, and I've just joined today. Sorry to hear about your struggles, but I'm sure you'll get them sorted out.

Like you, I've been suffering under the West of Scotland weather. Sometimes it can seem as if the thick grey cloud will never lift. But we've had a fair few beautifully clear nights recently, so here's hoping there'll be many more.

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