Is GoTo Wrong For Beginning Astronomers?

[R2-ditt0]

I too am a newbie.....got my first scope in may....10" newt with goto....I quickly realised that ...as good as it is,its next to useless if I don't know how to use it,or where to point it.....goto is more than flicking a switch!...I went and bought a startravel102 on an eq3 mount....instant observing(did'nt know what I was looking at)...instant learning.....now when I observe I am at least aiming for a subject....still using the 102.....when I'm ready...instant upgrade to the 10"

[Steve C]

I bought a goto when I was first starting out, great for actually finding objects, but I found I wasnt learning the sky for myself instead the goto was merely pointing at objects I'd selected.

I took a risk & got rid of the goto in favour of an eq5 & have never looked back. Not only do I now know where the main constellations are, also the location of several dso's, nebulae etc. In addition I find the challenge of actually locating an object is rewarding in its own right. Star-hopping is good fun, sometimes frustrating but the reward of having the object you've been searching for in your ep is what counts. There was one occasion I actually woke my wife up from her slumber at 2am as I'd found M81/ 82 after what seemed like weeks of patient searching (I'll never do that again, she didnt speak to me for days afterwards, although in hindsight that may have been a good thing!)

OK so I now have a goto again, for imaging as it goes, but still mainly use the motor facility to star hop & find my own way round. Now I know generally where most things are supposed to be its become a relatively straightforward process.

[sunoficarus]

Do you remember when you could see the Milky Way right down to the horizon? Do you remember skies so dark you could tell the horizon by where the stars stopped? Do you remember when the street lights went off at 10pm and no one had their gardens lit up like Heathrow with 500w floodlights? Do you remember when books told you to star hop visually with 4th and 5th magnitude stars?

Yes? So do I, but alas today, that's not going to happen from your back garden unless you are very lucky and live in the back end of beyond. Although I live nominally 'in the country', thanks to sky glow I can barely see the Milky Way directly overhead and the horizon is that orange halo around the entire sky. Without GoTo it would be very difficult to find many of the deep sky objects now for a newcomer.

Times change and so do peoples expectations. When I was a lad I would spend hours trying to find an asteroid by star hopping, most people just don't have the time to do that now unless they are retired and GoTo allows them to see the things they want to see in the time they have in our increasingly hectic lives.

Advise a beginner not to buy a GoTo scope? Why not advise them to go the whole hog and buy one of those 50mm refractor department store horrors that used to put so many people off Astronomy in the days before cheap good quality scopes for the full on 'good old days' experience?

[astroimpulse]

When I finally decided to get a scope I chose to forgo GOTO because my budget was low and I kind of agreed with the views it's better to learn old school style.

But when I decided to jump in with a bigger budget I went with GOTO because I simply don't have the opportunity to be out every night learning the skies.

So GOTO is ideal to get out and start spying right off the bat. The perfect way to keep me viewing

[Ant]

I resisted GOTO for many years, partly the cost and partly because I liked the idea of finding stuff myself.

But after moving (don't ask) I found that I stood no hope of finding stuff - even stuff that I knew the location of, I couldn't find/see visually...

So GOTO meant that I could locate and image object that I stood no hope of finding.

If you have nice dark skies and like the idea of finding stuff yourself then do buy a GOTO, if you don't... get GOTO.

And besides if you decide you want to try things manually - you don't have to use it the whole time!

Ant

[paraman]

I think it's also a question of how you deal with technology. If you take a passive approach and just push buttons then you're not going to get that much out of it. However if you use the technology as a tool to learn with and dig into how it all works then it can really enhance your observing experience and you can get a lot out of it.

That old expression "You only get out of it what you put into it...." is still as relevant today as it has ever been.

John

I am in agreement with the above, like it or not I've spent most of my adult life having to keep up with technology, I really have two options, accept change and adapt and learn or resist and stagnate.

Currently I'm typing on a machine that most of us wouldn't have dreamt about maybe only 15 years ago and yet millions of us use one without giving it a second thought. It gives me access to an almost inexaustible knowledge bank at the touch of a few buttons, of course I could go back a few more years and turn on me old valve powered radio, there's bound to be something on the light program apart from static . I reckon that I served my apprenticeship 20 odd years ago with setting circles and a dodgy planisphere and I cant say I'm sorry to see the back of them. I just dont see the point of fighting technology, its there to be used and if goto gives me only 10 mins extra viewing time or finding a faint target first go then I'm all for it.

[jonathan]

Perhaps the biggest buzz I got was when I first saw the Andromeda galaxy through binoculars, having found it by following what my Sky Scout told me about star hopping from the Great Square of Pegasus (iirc, still learning!) Now, I can quite easily find the Great Square and then find Andromeda, I still get a buzz from seeing it through binoculars. I saw it once using averted vision unaided but it was nothing more than a very faint smudge in the corner of my eye, not nearly as impressive as through binoculars.

The point here is that it was the gadget that helped me get that buzz, and I expect to use Sky Scout in conjunction with the Goto I have on order right now (or a manual mount if I get one later) because I need that guidance, simple as that. I would find it amazingly difficult to find most things without it, and I can't rely on having an experienced astronomer to hand when I want to go outside for half an hour's gorping at the night sky at 10pm. I have learned a lot from using the Sky Scout, it's something I can easily use out in the field which is the best time for me to learn, not from reading books indoors far from the night sky.

[Static030]

I am a rookie to astronomy and have been plugging away all summer with an eq2 mount. I must say it is extremely satisfying when you find something but on the other hand it can take awhile to find things. I have been using a planisphere no software so I am working out how and where things are. In another post I have mentioned that I plan on getting an HEQ5 mount with a new scope (another story), but one of my personal concerns was getting hooked on and used to the goto. Maybe I will love it, maybe I won't use it too much.....time will tell. I guess it is good to have the option. My main reason for it is tracking for photography.

BTW I have learned alot doing it manually.

Just my 2 cents.

Nigel

[ollypenrice]

Professional astronomers don't star hop...

Olly

[barkis]

I had a GoTo many years ago, and I made it myself. No, I'm not boasting. They were Setting Circles, and they were 10" in diameter.

RA and Dec. Nothing like the Mickey Mouse things on todays scopes, they were big, and the RA circle was directly indexed. By that I mean, the circle was attached to the wheel driven by the worm.

A slipping clutch allowed the circle to be positioned to the pointer, be it the east one or the west one depending which side of the mount the scope was, to be set to the RA of any object I was viewing with the drive on.

The circle was then essentially a sidereal clock.

Once set on a known star and set in RA, the scope could be manually slewed to any other object. The declination was a permanent fix, as the scope mount was permanently sited, and polar alignment had been done by the alignment method.

Imaging was a headache, as guiding was achieved by pulsing the drive plus or minus whilst keeping a guide star on the small box formed by parallel cross hairs of a guiding eyepiece, illuminated by a small bulb, the intensity was controlled by a potentiometer.

A small DC motor allowed Small corrections in Declination when required.

I have a modern Mount now, and there is no way I would want to go back to that old method.

Did I enjoy it, of course I did, I loved it. I made most of the system myself including the mount, drive telescope, and it's mirror.

They were happy times. Frustrating, but it can be these days too.

I got some decent results, but nothing anywhere near as good as

what is being achieved today, but the anticipation was always there, and it drove you on.

So, that's my story. There was loads of satisfaction, and that was sufficient.

Ron.

[brianb]

Professional astronomers don't star hop...

Precisely. Goto is a convenience for those who know what they're doing.

Setting Circles

Yes, that was the way things were done in the years Before Computers. It worked, very well indeed if you had an accurately aligned mount, an accurate sidereal time clock and were skilled at reading vernier guages. I knew someone (long dead now) who invariably used setting circles to find the Sun ... pointed the scope then opened the observatory shutter; 9 times out of 10 the Sun was slap in the middle of the field of view, it went wrong if you made a mistake in the arithmetic (usually working out the sidereal time or interpolating the position from tables).

[Sam]

Professional astronomers don't star hop...

Olly

good thing I'm an amateur astronomer then!

[dmahon]

I'm a beginner. I bought a GOTO mount. Would I do it again? Yes - well, not exactly, I'd buy the Synscan version and hook it up to a computer running CdC with an EQDIR interface to save a few pounds. My GOTO handset has only been used about 3 times.

I suspect the majority of newcomers used to use a starcharts or a book to find their way around, but these days many probably use Stellarium or a Skyscout to work out where they should be looking to find specific objects. Well, if you're going to do that, connecting the computer to the mount is the obvious step. I don't think that you get to "know the sky" anymore becuase you manually move it with instructions from a book / starchart / on the computer rather than having it moved automatically. It's a bit like "knowing the roads" if you use a map to find your way around rather than using satnav. Having a turn by turn list printed off from google maps does not make you "know the road".

You only learn the sky if you set out to do so. But why bother? I get my enjoyment from looking at (or taking pictures of) the things I want to see, or even just looking randomly through a low powered eyepiece. I don't really care about "knowing the sky" to be honest. When I watch TV, I get my enjoyment from watching the program, not from tuning it in.

[John]

I've owned 20+ scopes but only one had GOTO and I found it did not suit me, after the initial novely had worn off, even though I was a reasonably expereinced observer. I've nothing against GOTO though and it's impressive that the technology has been developed and made available at reasonably affordable prices.

Over the years I've been posting on SGL I have noticed as many posts by frustrated GOTO users as I have from non-GOTO astronomers who were having trouble finding things. So GOTO is not the "panacea for all ills" clearly.

One other coment I would make though is that spending time viewing astronomical objects is good, essential really, if you want to see all they have to offer in your scope. I get a little worried that GOTO users will skip from object to object, racking up their "object count", seeing lots of things but not really observing them, if you see what I mean.

Overall though, its a hobby (for us) and everybody can approach it in the way that suits them and the time they have available and GOTO just adds to that flexibility

[pbyrne]

[quote

Professional astronomers don't star hop...

Olly

]

Professional astronomers don't look through telescope eyepieces.

I can understand the merits on both camps, when I first began I was lucky enough to view from a location that was not too badly polluted and star hopping was easy. Since then I have moved house to a location where it can be difficult to locate Aries and GoTo is essential.

When I go out into the field I forgo the GoTo and get back to my beginnings and star hop. The sense of hunting down an object and capturing it is hard to beat and the time spent studying it is more rewarding, in my eyes anyway.

This is not a race to tick off the Messier's or the Herschel's in the fastest time possible, this is all about enjoying the hobby we love so much and appreciating what we see. If GoTo gives people this enjoyment, then so be it, if you want to observe 50 objects in a single night and enjoy that, so be it. If you spend half your night hunting down an obscure planetary or galaxy and that gives you pleasure, then so be it.

But I think you should be able to identify Andromeda as you search for M31, know where to find Triangulum as your GoTo whirls towards M33 and know that red star coming up in the east is Betelgeuse.

[NessieHunter]

worked 68 hrs this week already, its raining , tomorrow may be ok, bring on the goto