Posts Made By: Rod Kaufman

Let's talk about the real modifications of this toy hauler. First, it's been dealer prepped for the ultimate protection against combined CBN(chemical, nuclear, biological) attack. In it, Floyd can, at his command, activate anyone of several robotic telescopes simultaneously in six different states for real-time imaging, depending upon weather and seeing conditions. In addition, Floyd enjoys the security of knowing that only he can activate an enable button for the launch sequence of a minuteman II silo (genuine US government surplus)containing a 150 megaton nuke warhead preset for a fused air burst at 10,000 feet with a blast radius the size of Montana, uninhabital at ground zero for 100 years (200 years for commies!). (Floyd Blue Specs for the ultimate in quality devastation!)
Floyd continues to hone his skills in deep sky imaging, unfettered by adverse weather conditions, political upheaval, and un-welcome intrusions as he expertly captures photons in the environmentally controlled atmosphere of his state of the art toy hauler...

I've heard it both ways, ie you must level with these units and you don't have to bother doing it. It's been my experience that you get better results(better "warp factor" and accuracy) if the scope is level before you proceed with the vertical alignment or initialization. I've got the JMI minimax unit on a 10" dob and leveling it first seems to help a lot.
No problems with the sky commander and I was glad I used the latter on my 16" f4.5 dob when I was setup on rough terrain at the base of Pinos a few months ago when the parking lot was closed with snow. I was basically setup on what appeared to be a piece of lunar surface and I couldn't imagine a JMI unit working very well on it.
Give your unit a try without leveling at see how it works...

Paul,
I have an astrosystems 16" f4.5 dob and I know some of the components are similar between both scopes. I'm sure you will enjoy it. Nice color choice!

And you might want to consider an a less expensive alternative:
http://www.owlastronomy.com/kowldiag.htm

Howie's are among the best:
http://www.collimator.com/coltext.htm

I see one prominent vendor in New York is selling both the Orion 120 EON ED refractor for $1999 while it also sells the skywatcher 120ED pro for $1495. Both scopes ship free.
Are these the same scopes made by synta or another company?
Anybody know?

That's pretty good for a random sample of C 9,25s, is it not?

victor truglio said:

I have a 12" Meade Lightbridge that I use in light polluted skies.
Will a move up to the 16 Lightbridge give me better or worse views factoring in seeing conditions, light pol, etc.
12" aperture is the largest I have used so far.
Thanks

I moved up from a 12.5" discovery to a 16" astrosystems truss dob a number of years ago and I never regretted it. In general, the 16" has always provided me with better views than the 12.5" and the latter had a good primary.
Big mirrors collect light indiscriminately so light pollution remains a problem but bigger scopes tend to do better with line filters such as an 0111 in light polluted and non-light polluted areas than do smaller scopes.
You'll notice the increased weight with the 16" lightbridge so be prepared for it. The 12" is a lightweight and the 16" is a heavy weight and there's no getting around it if you have to lift the latter every time you use it...

A great read from one of the commentators...
Where all that used space equipment ends up:
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-were-covering-our-planet-with-a-cloud-of-space-junk-1703153.html

I see Meade stumbled across a forgotten 152mm ED APO, the last of its kind from the factory, and is offering it for sale on their "factory outlet special":
http://www.shopatron.com/product/part_number=0609-00-00/1323.0.57212.0.0.0.0
It looks like it's about the only meade ED model that Ed Ting recommended at the time these were being produced on his scopereviews website:
http://www.scopereviews.com/page1g.html
I wonder what else Meade has found laying around their factory...