Synscan for the Win

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Or Goto.

So I spent Monday night trying to collimate my scope and after what must have been 2/3 hours I was none the wiser whether it was OK or not.

Tuesday night I looked outside at 10pm ish and I could see Orion, so quickly took everything outside into the back garden and set it up manually (no power). Popped in an eyepeice, found Rigel and did a star test... Hmmm that's not too bad apart from a funny black band[1] oh well it'll do for now and so I had an hour looking around Orion M42/43 Trapezium etc. All in all it was a great first time properly seeing (last time there was too much dew).

[1] And so yesterday I did a search on here and it turns out that my black band could be some sort of heat current due to not letting the scope cool down... SGL answers my question again.

Last night noticed that it was cloudy but with a few breaks in the clouds. So I set my scope up and put on the fan before leaving it for a while did a star test and the black band had gone (just needs a tweak in collomation I think now). This time I 3 star aligned (which was a chore getting 3 stars not behind clouds). This is where I was so pleased I bought a 2nd hand Synscan instead of a new SynTrek, entered M36 and there was a dull grey patch of sky, slowly but surely a few stars became visable and then there in all it's glory it appeared... Cooool I was able to do the same with 37&38 and got a very brief glimpse of the bee hive cluster before it fully clouded over.

If it wasn't for the goto option I could well have just floundered around the sky or most probably just not used my scope, so for nights last night as a newbie it was great.

[PARTY MARTY]

GOTO is COOL!!!

10 years ago goto telescopes were very expensive and only a few telescopes offered such option and Goto devices weren't as good at tracking as well!

But nowaday's you pick up some excellent goto telescopes for as little as £240, and work extremely well.

Skywatcher with it's Synscan Goto wins for me any day!!! And now they are getting better, affordable, and making Astronomy much more fun!!

I know that many other people think I'm lazy and I should learn the sky better and use setting circles, which I agree with them myself, But come on if the technology we got nowaday's, why don't we just use it!!!!!

I did use old method of star hopping and setting circles, but I started to get bored and sometimes furstrated from it!!!! I prefer looking at DSO's much better than fart a round using Star maps and co-ordinates!!!:):)

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I know that many other people think I'm lazy and I should learn the sky better and use setting circles, which I agree with them myself, But come on if the technology we got nowaday's, why don't we just use it!!!!!

Yep probably not for the purists but I'd rather be looking than faffing about