[AZ-Observing] Re: Marathon: Early Report

Hi Rick,

Thank you for the heads up. I'll have to go check it out tonight. I note you
didn't mention Celestron's Nextar but as I run the scope from a laptop, it
is fairly easy to push data from one program to another. The one I have been
using and used at the marathon was Michael Swanson's "Nextar Observers List"
ver 2.6.4, It is freeware available at www.nexstarsite.com  (along with a
long list of other freeware and not so freeware). It has a fairly good
alignment pair selection but has been great at putting together observing
lists, and overall scope control. The second part that was big for me came
from a rather long winded discussion with Celestron on the precision of
their "sky align" logic. Using it as written, their spec will put an object
in the FOV of a 40MM eyepiece but, if you re-align right after the initial
alignment you can get it so tight that you can have most any object hit in
the FOV of a 9MM eyepiece. For me I start with a 9MM double crosshair
reticle and do a fairly close two star alignment on a very carefully chosen
pair of stars (which it sounds like where your program will shine), I
usually pick north / south pairs. After the scope is satisfied with the
initial alignment, I slew back and forth between the two stars and realign
each one. This is done (Celestron's method) by centering the star in the
reticle and fine tuning it over a couple of minutes until it will stay dead
center (in the initial alignments the tracking is off so the star wanders,
with the initial alignment done, tracking is now on). At this point you drop
back to the alignment menu and tell it to replace your current alignment of
that star with a new alignment. I have found that doing this back and forth
a time or two can produce an alignment 4 times better than what Nexstar is
spec'd for. This and fine tuning the backlash seems to have the biggest
impact on these scopes and for me a lot of frustration on the precision
side.

Jimmy Ray

-----Original Message-----
From: az-observing-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:az-observing-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Rick Tejera
Sent: Sunday, March 26, 2006 9:14 PM
To: az-observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [AZ-Observing] Re: Marathon: Early Report


Jimmy,

Here's an App I found for selecting alignment stars. It was written for
scopes using the LX 200 or AutoStar. I found that while Sky Commanders
Alignment Stars are different, there are enough close pairs that you could
use find Similar alignments with little difficulty (that is if you use Sky
commander). I'm sure other DSC's or computer controlled scopes could find
similar alignments as well.

Here is the Link:

http://www.ilangainc.com/bestpair/


Rick Tejera
President
Editor SACnews
Saguaro Astronomy Club
Phoenix, Arizona
saguaroastro@xxxxxxx
www.saguaroastro.org


--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.385 / Virus Database: 268.3.1/292 - Release Date: 3/24/2006

--
See message header for info on list archives or unsubscribing, and please 
send personal replies to the author, not the list.

Other related posts: