Posts Made By: Robert Smerdon

Its not a house, Its not a Corvette, Its not a Harley.
So why do some people try to sell there used scope at the new or next to new price?????? Then they get upset when you offer them market value. Its like anything else in the world. the minute you drive it off the "new" lot it losses 2%-5% value. Two recent ads are top examples. one is a 3 yea old LX200 10" with extras for $4000.00. This is pure sentimenal value and has no place in any market. For $4000.00 I could get a new 10"GPS with new coatings and all the extras and still have money left over to eat at a steak house for a couple of weeks.
The other ad was a LX200 12" a few years old and next to no extras for $3500.00. For $500 more dollars I could pick up a
new 12"GPS with new coating and a warranty.
I don't know, maybe its just me but I hope not. and I don't think it is just me. Would anybody here but a three year old used motorcycle at a new price. or a camera, a guitar or anyting else.
I don't know who first said it but its still true.
An item is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. reguardless of what it is.
Comments please!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Just bought a used LX200 10". So I'm hunting EP's for it.
I have whiched the scope over to a 2" visual back from AP and got an Antares 2" star diagonal from scopestuff.
I am currently trading my meade zoom EP for a meade 18mm SWA and I have the 26mm that came with the scope. I want to use a combo of 1.25" and 2" EP's but I am on a budget and can't afford the high end EP's. I have found a used 32mm 2" Antares erfle 70' FOV for $79. but I don't hear a lot about the Antares EP's, So what's the low down on them????
Please feel free to make suggestions on 1.25" and 2" EP's but remember I'm on a budget
another question I have is about the shorty barlows. will these work well on my LX200?? I am selling my ETX125 and I want to keep some of the acc's that I had for that if they will work well with the bigger scope. Thanks

I want to get into astrophotograghy in the future but for now I am just doing the homework. I plan on getting a few of the books mentioned here. At the moment I have been reading a lot of internet items about it and I don't see alot of people talking about broadband filters. I see them advertized for astrophoto's but I can't seem to find anything about them in use. can someone direct me to some reading on this subject. Thanks

I replaced the collimation screws with thumbscrews on my lx200 10". I have been working with it slowly from night to night and have came to the point where I am getting good views but not quite an airy disk on a star. but when I look at the unfocused star I see something that I didn't see before I replace the screws.
The thing I noticed was a flare through the unfocused star, its starts in the middle, the small center dot kinda flares through the star image in one direction. the center dot can not be seen when unfocused in the other direction, just a dark center. So whats going on? I'm I getting close?
One thing that is hindering me is air currents. I have not yet had the chance to stay out super late when the currents are at there least so I have been doing this through the early to late evenings

I have a lenspens and it will clean all my ep's until now.
I just picked up a 6.4, my first high power ep. but the lenspens is too big. do they make a smaller one for these smaller ep's??? if not, how should I clean it??

I have an LX200 10". I replaced the stock visual back with an AP 2" visual back and picked up a 2" diagonal.
Now I find in order to use a meade focal reducer I need to buy two adapters in addition to the focal reducer to make it work. My question is
Does anyone make a 2" (48mm)focal reducer that would just thread into the diagonal?????
will it even work in this position if someone did make it??
I replaced the shock visual back to get a bigger light path.
but adding the meade focal reducer would make that path smaller again. I think its 37mm. It would be much easier just to have the reducer screw into the diagonal and not lose as much of the light path.
Is this idea to simple to be true?
like I said I'm a newbe. I'm I barking up the wrong tree with this simple idea?

Once again LOL. OK I replace the colimation screws on my LX200 with knobs "months" ago. I had some problems that I worked out with the help of the fine people here. the main problem I had was pinched optics and that has been resolved.
Went out last night and it was the clearest night I seen in the south US in months. so I set up and tweaked the collimation after about 2 hours of cool down. I must say I got it very close IMO. So now I pop in the diagonal and try different EP's and the collimation is out. its out enough that anyone would have seen it.
The problem is that before I replaced the screws I did not have this problem with the diagonal.??????????????
Anyone one have any ideas?
Should I just collimate it with the diagonal in it seeing that I don't have any astrophotography equipment yet?
are there any collimation pro's living in the South Carolina area that can help me in person??

I want to start taking some pics. I picked up a used laptop last week(333mhz, 64 ram) to use with my web cam. I would like to find some software for scope controll of my 10" LX200, and pic processing software also. I'm just starting and don't want to spend an arm and leg just yet.
I was looking at the deepsky software that is for sale here on astromart. the price is right! anybody use it? what do you think of it??. any others I should look at???
I did download astrostack2 but it won't work right so I went back to astrostack1. can anybody recommend some other processing software to get me started.
Thanks
Robert

Hi everyone, here's my first pic using a vesta pro 690
(no mods) on my 10" LX200 with a mogg adapter,mogg 6.3 reducer,IDAS LP filter. I used SC desire program to capture avi(300 frames). I didn't mess around too much with the controls on the cam so it came out black and white, I guess I needed to turn the gamma up some. I only turned down the contrast and brightness.
I used astrostack to stack them and used unsharp mask.
I have a question for anyone here that know anything about the Meade Epoch2000ip software.
I could not get the frames to load in the program. It keeps telling me that its an "invalid bitmap file"!!!!!!!!!
any one know what I'm doing wrong here??
how can I get these frames into Epoch200ip??

ture story;
I was out late one night last week. my first trip out of the backyard with the LX200.
when I packed up to go home I put my astrozap dew shield on the front seat on my truck. after I loaded the scope in the back I called my dog and opened the door to let her in the truck. Well 70 lbs of frozen chow/bulldog went flying in the truck and crunch when the dew shield. of coarse the dog looked at me like it was my fault LOL.
the dew shield split next to the velcro the whole lenght of the shield. I emailed Joe at astrozap to ask if he knew of a way to repair it. he replied no, it can't be repaired.
but then to my surprize he offered to replace it!!!!!!!!
This is service that is above and beyond the call of duty.
ASTROZAP RULES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!