Posts Made By: Michael Brannon

I was wondering if anyone has had any experience with this mount. It looks just like a CG5, comes with an illuminated polar scope, and sells for only $159! Is this a piece of junk, or is it comparable to a CG5? Thank you in advance for any responsed I can get to this question.
Mike

This is a truck I used to own about 15 years ago (my younger days). I did all the work on it myself. I used to put it in truck shows, and it was actually in an issue of Truckin' Magazine once. What do you guys think?
Mike

With Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez. It may not be a classic, but it's a lot of fun.....

This is a cool movie. I'm not as crazy about the sequels.

I have a telepod head, and want to mount it to an Orion paragon plus photo style tripod. I just got it. On the paragon tripod, after taking off the fluid pan head, there is a 1/4" 20 stud. The telepod head has a larger size hole in the middle for mounting, and a 1/4" 20 hole off to the side. I was wondering if someone out there that has run into this could share their knowledge with me and tell me if there is some way that I can mount this without having to mount the telepod head off to the side to use the 1/4" 20? Is there a part out there that I could use to mount the head into the center hole and have everything balanced better? Any help would be much appreciated.
Thanks,
Mike

I just bought a Scopetronix Maxview 40 and adapter to connect my Olympus C-3020 zoom digital up to my telescope(s). I took it out for the first time last night, and as luck would have it, the seeing was pretty bad. It was a foggy night (in Florida), and the clouds made things difficult. I did manage to get a few shots of the moon though. This one was taken through my Orion ED80. It turned out a little hazy due to the fog and clouds, but I'm still pretty happy with it. I think that for a first try, it turned out pretty well. What do you guys think?

(Continued from digital cameras and adapters forum)
Hello Mauricio. The seeing conditions were pretty bad that night. We had fog and clouds coming through constantly (I live in Florida). The images were actually taken through the fog. I took them in very high resolution, then resampled them to bring the size of the picture down smaller. This actually made the definition in the pictures better. Then, I used the sharpen feature to bring out the detail a little better. The setup I used was as follows:
Orion ED80
Orion Skyview Pro mount (mounted on Al's astro oak legs)
William Optics 2" 90 degree diagonal
University Optics 2.8x Klee barlow
Scopetronix Maxview 40 eyepiece and appropriate adapter
Olympus C-3020 zoom digital camera
I realize that the Scopetronix Maxview is probably not the optimal setup for astrophotography, but I wanted something that I could use to take some astro pictures through the telescope and take pictures using the 80 as a spotter as well.
I have a question though. Could someone tell me how is the best way to go about getting good focus in a setup like this? I can find good focus on the moon, or terrestrial stuff, but the little lcd screen on the camera isn't of much use while trying to get focus on planets.
Thanks,
Mike

I'm considering a new (to me) scope. I'm looking for mainly planetary detail. It would be used mainly for visual, but some astrophotography as well. The two scopes I have in mind are a Calestron C9.25 and an Intes MN61 Mak-Newt. I'm wondering how the extra aperture of the 9.25 would compare with the small central obstruction (around 18%) of the 6 inch Intes. If anyone out there has any experience with both of these scopes, please tell me what you think. I would be going with a used scope. So, I know a lot would probably depend on the particular sample purchased. Thanks in advance for any comments.
Mike

I was just wondering if you can still have the picture of the day displayed on the left side bar like before. Is there a setting that I need to change to do this, or is that part of the fine tuning that is still to come? I hope it's not gone.
Thanks.........

Has anyone taken a look at the new Celestron 130mm Mak spotting scope Anacortes has listed for $359? I was wondering how this new one would stack up against Orion's popular Starmax 127. This one is a 2000mm focal length (f/15.38). So the central obstruction is smaller, and it has an internal flip mirror system. It even comes with the padded bag like Orion's, and a 10x50 finder. Comments please....
Thanks
Mike