upgrades for 200P dob

[Hadron]

On 05/01/2017 at 21:11, DRT said:

I would recommend a Telrad Finder as a very good early upgrade. It transforms your ability to point the scope at the right part of the sky and find the objects you are looking for. You can have all the fancy eyepieces and filters that money can buy but if you can't point the scope at the right part of the sky you won't see much

 

If you take just one piece of advice from this thread this is the one. Buying a Telrad has been the single best "upgrade" I have made since I started this astronomy lark. It makes zeroing in on the right area a doddle and you can then use the finder scope to make the final corrections to put you bang on target. Telrads really do make you're life so much simpler when it comes to star hopping your way to a difficult to find object (if I'm honest I place more faith in mine than I do the abilities of my goto HEQ5 pro) 

[Dave In Vermont]

As Stellarium has been mentioned and suggested, allow me to briefly explain what this is:

Stellarium belongs to what is called a 'Planetarium-Program.' It is a very large software-program that can show you a very realistic view of the current (or any) time as seen from your location - which you will tell it. This view can be as simple, or as deep and inclusive with entities to include stars, galaxies, nebulae, and even man-made satellites passing over your head right then. Similar programs can cost you upwards of £250. while Stellarium (which is one of the best) is absolutely FREE! Best deal out there. So here's my 'Cut & Paste' to get you going:

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On this link is the main page for downloading Stellarium. Choose which version is correct for your computer. Here you go:

http://www.stellarium.org/
 
As for instructions, a full copy of them is bundled with the program that you download. But if you need another copy for some reason, these can be downloaded here:
 
https://sourceforge.net/projects/stellarium/files/Stellarium-user-guide/0.15.0-1/stellarium_user_guide-0.15.0-1.pdf/download

This program is quite large, so download when you have a few minutes. I'll leave you with a screenshot of mine, and also one of the screen approximating of how it looks when you begin. Please know I am an experienced user.

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Here is the equivalent of how this will be after you first install it:

 

And this is my own - as stated, it is quite advanced:

 

Enjoy!

Dave

[M106]

Thanks for taking the time to write up that, i've been using stellarium since its very early versions  its a fantastic program!

i'm now starting to design a control interface (raspberry pi based) and mechanism so i can motorize my new scope and control it via Stellarium and Pi   hoping to have it at least @ beta by summer, i'll be sure to post up here on the forum for anyone who wants to give it a try with their Dob; the project will be open source, using as generic components as possible. Will start a blog on it when theres something worth reading