Posts Made By: Craig Smith

I would like to do something at my daughter's school during the day. There are apparently no sunspots now. I know sometimes the moon is visible. I've heard you can sometimes see Jupiter in the daytime. How about Saturn? It's high overhead in the morning. I have a goto scope but it won't find anything without first aligning to stars. Would I be able to find/see it with my 80 mm refractor?

My LX200 GPS has developed severe pointing problems. Although this might not help, I thought it might be a good idea to update the firmware; I've wanted to download updated object info anyway. I connected it using the standard serial port but my computer isn't seeing it. I've read and checked everything I can find. When I look at the port properties in the Device Manager, it says it's enabled and working properly. When I look at renaming the port to a different number, I see that com3 and com4 are already used. My computer's help says that 1 and 3 use the same interrupt and cannot be used at the same time. Could this be the issue? My modem uses com4; I have no idea what uses port 3 or how to determine it so I can turn it off. Any ideas?

Interestingly, when I tried to rename com1 to com2 anyway (which uses the same interrupt as com4), it said it was already opened by an application; I didn't have anything else open though.

I used to know a little about this but it's been a long time; any other way to check the ports? I have a laptop with a serial port, but it's recessed and cannot be used with the Meade cable. I don't have a serial cable to connect the two computers for testing purposes either. I have a Dell PC with Windows XP.

Thanks.

Thinking of going up to Pinos over Thanksgiving. Two questions:

Would I likely be the only sole up there?
What temperatures might I expect?

Thanks.

How was Pinos last night?

I have Pentax 7x50 PCF WP binocular. All bright stars look like Saturn -- i.e. they have flares on the sides -- even in the center of the field. Is this a sign of pinched optics, or something else, or normal?

I would like a small lightweight scope for daytime and casual nighttime use, potentially even backpack-able with a lightweight tripod. I've been spoiled by a William Optics 80 ED, which I had to sell but was too heavy anyway. I would like a WO 66 SD but it's more than I want to spend, so I'm leaning towards the ST80. But I'm wondering about the Orion GoScope 70. I assume the optics aren't as good as the 80, the included eyepieces aren't as good, and the focusing mechanism is not standard (although I'm not sure it's any worse than the ST80). But does anyone have any experience with it?

Another option is a 90 mm Mak, but I'm concerned about a too-narrow field of view. I wish there was something in between. Celestron's 65 Mini-Mak has a nice focal length but only a 45 degree diagonal.

There are also a couple spotting scopes (WO Toucan 50 and Celestron 60 SV f6.7) that have a "diagonal" that can be adjusted between 45 and 90 degrees, but I assume neither of these are suitable for astronomy.

Any other recommendations? Thanks very much for you advice.

Thanks very much to all for your replies -- excellent info, just what I needed. Now to make the decision ....

Thanks very much to all of you for the comments -- great information.

It would be nice to see removeable eyepieces on lower-end binoculars -- not only to vary the magnification, but to be able to use diagonals as well. But I guess the cost of the accessories wouldn't make much sense with low-cost binoculars. I thought about zoom binoculars, but I guess they don't work so well for astronomy.

Thanks all very much for the great advice!

Thanks for your replies. I think there's a place for both a modest pair of binoculars as well as a small scope. Currently doing binocular research.

The cheap Apogee scope might not be a bad alternative until I can spring the $500 plus for a Stellarvue package, so I'll have to give that some thought.