Posts Made By: Cam Hui

I was using someone else's portable 12V hair dryer the other night to "cook" off the dew off a corrector with my Kendrick 12V18ah battery. In the middle of it the hair dryer quit. In retrospect, it probably blew out something.

Now the little light on the trickle charger won't even come on when I try to charge the battery. I don't have a voltmeter.

Any suggestions on how to diagnose the problem?

Does anyone have any experience with comparing Sky Tracker or servocat goto systems on a dob with other goto systems, such as Autostar, Nexstar, Gemini, Temma, etc?

How does the accuracy compare?

Thank you and clear skies,
Cam

It was nice last weekend and I had my FS-102 out with the goto mount. The mount was polar aligned and set up overnight.

In daylight, I was able to see Venus (a tiny sliver) and Jupiter (although the seeing was poor). However, when I pointed it towards Saturn, I was unable to see anything in daylight, although I was able to see the planet at dusk when it was fairly low on the horizon.

I have heard that it is possible to see objects as dim as 2nd magnitude in daylight. Is Saturn just too dim this time of year or would aperture greater than 4" help?

I've got a bad case of aperture fever and I am considering a similar configuration.

Just one question that came up in the Yahoo discussion group: it was suggested that I look at a Mewlon (250 or 300). Can anyone make any comment about the differences between the C-14 and the Mewlons (other than the huge price difference)?

I got their 40mm and their 25mm, both Plossl. The 40mm had WAY TOO MUCH eye relief and the contrast was disappointing.

The 25mm performs well, roughly the same as the Meade 26mm that they give out with all their telescopes.

I own a FS-102 and I have looked through a club Meade 12" Newtonian on a number of occasions. I haven't seen a great deal more detail through the Newtonian, but DSOs are definitely brighter.

In my light polluted CT skies, along with the so-so seeing that we have had this winter, I have had trouble seeing a number of objects, such as the Whirlpool Galaxy, through the FS-102 (I have a goto mount, so I KNOW it's pointing at the right spot). However, when I look through the 12" Meade, I can definitely see that objects are brighter.

On the planets, I can't see a great deal of difference between the two telescopes (given that I have been limited by the poor seeing).

I have been struck by aperture fever on occasion. After some analysis, here are my conclusions:

1) The APO is all I need given my current location

2) If I had a dark site, a telescope with a larger aperture would be of use, but I would have to sacrifice portability

3) The caveat to 2) is that you also need decent seeing conditions at the dark site. I have been compiling the conditions (number of clear nights, seeing conditions, etc.) at a number of possible dark sites around North America at cleardarksky.com

Hope this helps.

The Celestron website has a list of dealers:

http://www.celestron.com/dealers/index.htm

The Excelsis website has a user rating of dealers. I would, however, take some of the comments with a grain of salt:

http://www.excelsis.com/1.0/section.php?sectionid=24

I recently had my FS-102 side-by-side with an 8" Meade SCT. We went through the same list of DSO objects, one at a time.

The major difference was the level of resolution in the globular clusters. M3 and M13 were much better resolved in the 8" than the FS-102. I had to really crank up the power in the refractor to get close to a similar level of resolution.

Other than that, most of the other DSOs looked about the same, albeit a little brighter.

That experience (somewhat) cured my aperture fever.

I agree. If someone tried to sell, say, a Ceravolo he'd have his hand snapped off in 3 minutes.

Looks like a piece of artillery...