Posts Made By: robert jann

Thanks.That's really helpful.

I'm new. I visit every day and read select forum posts. I check the classified for a reflector near enough to go pick up, but I'm not really quite ready to buy yet. I had decided to buy here or at Anacortes. I LOVE this site.

So when Herb decides what to do, I will pay. If Herb decides to keep it as is, I will become a supporter. I don't want to lose this resource. The few contacts I have made here in answer to my questions have been courteous, thoughtful and knowledgable.

Bob

Hugh, does that mean there's less light reaching the eyepiece of the higher f-number? I know there's less light when you stop down a camera. If there is less light, does that mean you can't see as much, or is it more like squinting and you just can't see as wide of a field of view? Or is it both? So is a higher number f-value telescope better for photography and worse for viewing?

Thank goodness for a "beginners" forum where one can ask such questions.

Bob

I use a heavy black body suit like local workers wear which I bought at Kmart for $30 and it's great on windy mountain tops at 25.

John, I have an ETX60 and I really like it.
If you have specific questions, I'll be glad to assist as I can.
My autostar works perfectly. I can go to anything dead on with it, although when I get there I can't always see very much with that little 60mm aperture. You can do much better!
My local club helped me with some basic problems I was having. You have to enter the exact longitute and latitude for where you are viewing. You have to be perfectly level to start with. You have to know the stars well enough to align to them using the hand controler. But after you do that, you will be very pleased, I think.
Let me know if I can help.
Bob

Thanks for the lesson! Wow, that's really fascinating!

For anyone who lives within an hour of the Blue Ridge Parkway and Skyline Drive between Washington, D.C. and Cherokee, NC, there are countless high, dark sites in park picnic areas with 360 views. If you have a camper into which you can fit your big scope, you have everything you need.

Just to play devil's advocate:

My first scope was an ETX60 which I bought at Walmart for $200 and then added $100 for a tripod. I liked it and used it for about three years. I knew nothing about deep sky objects and spent my time looking at the moon and planets and their moons. I enjoyed what I saw and took it camping with me. It's very portable. It did not turn me off for astronomy at all. I bought a coupler for my 5 megapixel Sony camera and took pictures of the moon. I saw the moon and Saturn in ways I had never seen them before. Then I started taking pictures of flowers and birds with it.

I now have a 10" Orion Dobsonian. I am still learning the sky, and I like to set up my ETX60 alongside my Orion to give me a better idea of where to point my Orion. The GOTO works great after all this time. The ETX has been blown over in a wind storm, used and abused, shoved into cars and trucks, and still it points exactly to the object I want. For me, it was a fine first scope.

Bob

64.
First saw Saturn's rings at age 10 and never forgot it. Retired to dark mountains in an undeveloped area of woods and farmers, and I couldn't resist getting into this hobby. It mostly rains now, or is cloudy, or the full moon is too bright. But I'm ready to go out in an instant. Local farmers know I'm coming and they leave their gates unlocked so I can drive my little Toyota truck up the side of the mountains to sites where the only light comes from above.

The gentleman who sold me my first reflector noticed that I had a Palm and pointed out that the Planetarium program has a telrad finder built into the star charts. As a beginner, I find it far better than star charts because you can put it on night vision mode and look at the stars in real time right there beside your telescope.