Difficulties with telescope

[devdusty]

Hello. I am a 70 year old pensioner living in Exeter, Devon. From my back garden I can only see stars down to magnitude 3.5 with the naked eye, due to the light pollution.

I have a Skywatcher 90 mm refractory on an equatorial mount. However I have problems with aligning the finder scope, and also how to manoeuvre the telescope on the equatorial mount.

If any fellow astronomer living in the Exeter or Easy Devon area would be willing to visit to help me with the above problems, I would be very grateful.

Thanks

Chris P

[happy-kat]

Welcome Chris

The finder scope can be aligned during the day on a very distant tree or mast (never the sun). Once you've got the telescope looking at the object (use the eyepiece with highest number it is the least powerful) then look at the finder and adjust the knobs so that the finder is also on the object. Now swap the eyepiece and put in the lowest numbered one and fine tune the finder. That's it.

I can't help with the mount as I don't use one of those.

[rwilkey]

Hi Chris,

Equatorial mounts (EQ) are always difficult to use by beginners, they are not very intuitive in my opinion, I prefer to use AZ (alt-azimuth) mounts (simple up-down, left-right movement).  This video by David Fuller may be of help to you:

 

[devdusty]

Thanks for posting that video rwilkey. Unfortunately he makes it look a lot easier to manoeuvre the telescope, then I am able to do.

Chris P

[Louis D]

3 hours ago, devdusty said:

Thanks for posting that video rwilkey. Unfortunately he makes it look a lot easier to manoeuvre the telescope, then I am able to do.

Chris P

You might want to convert it to an alt-az mount to see if you get on better with the motions.  You can do this by tipping the latitude adjuster all the way back so the polar axis points at zenith and locking it down in that position (if it moves that far back).  Now, the two axes will move up-down (altitude) and left-right (azimuth) as if you were at the north pole (90 degrees latitude).  You'll lose single axis tracking and will have to nudge both axes to track objects.  If you don't like this mode any better, you can always switch back later to EQ mode.  You might also want to loosen the slow motion clutches slightly, so you don't always have to use the slow motion controls to track.

[Carbon Brush]

My first 'proper' scope had an EQ mount. Yes it was bit of an odd thing to sort. I suppose I was thrown in at the deep end.

But after getting my head around it, there was no looking back. It has been EQ mounts for me ever since.

As long as the mount is sort of north-ish and sort of level-ish then once you have moved on to an object it becomes one knob tracking.

Hope this helps, David.

[SIDO]

I understand the difficulty of using an eq mount both from a physical disability standpoint and the added complications an eq mount brings, having trouble aligning the finder can more easily be overcome than a physical limitation with the mount. I agree a conversion to alt az might indeed help if that is the case so if someone close by is handy converting and useing eq mounts can pop by that might be your best route to get on. Is there a local club you can call on to help? I struggle myself now with an eq mount and have been using them for a long time, best of luck ?

        And Clear/Skies...Freddie.

[Alan64]

Yes, throw the RA-axis back to the 90° position on the latitude-scale, or as near as you can.  On my EQ-2 I can throw it back to about 85°, which is better than nothing.  A simple modification can be performed to throw it all the way back to 90°, if you'd like to know how...

You can still use the slow-motions, the declination to an extent, and for an alt-azimuth.  The counterweight should also be attached, and to balance that side of the mount...

...and there you are: up and down, and left to right.