Posts Made By: Rod Kaufman

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2013/11/2014-nissan-rogue-first-drive-video/index.htm
Perhaps the next "SUV of the year"?
Decisions, decisions...

Notice how the Nissan Rogue morphs into a Toyota Rogue:
http://tehranchronicle.com/2014-nissan-rogue-specs-review-and-price-tag/5350/
I mean you can't even trust these guys to do a decent car review!

Chris,
Although I don't have an astromaster, I do have a minimax and a sky commander unit on my dobs and I have used my minimax on a 10" schmidt-cass. The warp factor of 2.9 is too high and indicates your alignment is off. It should be no higher than 1.5 and preferably under 1. Most encoders operate at 4000 tics or less so you might want to consult your owners manual to see if your encoder settings are possibly too high. Also, and this is important, make sure your optical-mechanical axis are in alignment. Finally, make certain your mount is level. If you stiil have problems,contact a tech at Celestron and ask for help.

I am not so sure that your perception is real. At times, I see other brands or aperatures for sale, and it seems like there is a "run" on a certain scope for sale. I see the same thing on the eyepiece section where there frequently seems to be alot of radians for sale, including a slew of focal lengths from the same seller. Some have commented about the frequent sale of radians but others don't believe it's a trend. I suppose it would take some sort of statistical evaluation to determine if it's real or apparent.

Celestron tech support emailed me this afternoon to inform me of the following:
1. New GPS units take 30-40 minutes to link up the first time.
2. Thereafter, they link up in 2 or 3 minutes.
I tried the unit again tonight and all is apparently well as my auto 3 star alignment happened without a hitch and the goto functioned as it should. I wish my instruction sheet had included the information supplied by the Celestron tech-support.
Thanks to all who have taken the time to provide their input in helping me solve the problem.

I recently purchased a CN16 GPS unit with auxillary port and hooked it up to my CG-5 advanced series GT goto mount and it doesn't work. I've turned the GPS unit to the "on" position in the handpaddle after I've leveled the mount, polar aligned it, entered the index marks, etc. I get a message (which I believe is the correct message) stating, "searching GPS" followed in a few seconds by "enter auto three star alignment" which I also believe is correct. However, the mount then slews to the alignment stars which are'nt close to where they should be.
Floyd Blue has previously helped me enter time, date, place etc manually in the field and the goto has worked just fine. I bought the GPS unit so I don't have to enter everything manually and also because the alignments are supposed to be more accurate.
I got the GPS unit on Saturday via Fed Ex and tried it Saturday night from my home in Castaic. As it happened, I had excellent transparency and seeing, so much so that I could see a great deal of the milky way despite suburban light pollution. After numerous checks, rechecks, and power-downs and restarts, I somehow got an accurate three star auto alignment and I was able to continue to observe to 2:00am, pulling in brighter planetaries, galaxies, and clusters with my antares 6" f6.5 refractor on the CG-5 goto mount but I have no idea of why the last attempt was successful when multiple previous attempts were not.
The poorly-written one page instruction sheet that comes with the CN16 GPS unit simply covers installing the unit on the mount/tripod with one note telling you to turn the unit on in the handpaddle. The sheet refers you to the owner's manual of the mount for "detailed instruction on GPS assisted alignments". Trouble is, there are no detailed instructions with the mount on GPS-assisted alignments, either with the manual that came with my mount or in the updated manual(s) online in the Celestron website.
The version of my handpaddle is 305 and the current version is 4. something or other but there's no indication if the firmware has to be updated for the GPS unit to work.
I called Celestron support this morning and, after being put on hold and listening to elevator music for twenty minutes, I gave up on their non-toll free telephone line. I've placed an email assistance request available on the Celestron website and I'm awaiting a response.
The whole thing has been very frustrating, especially since I was led to believe the CN16 GPS would be a plug and play item...

I got an advertising email from the sponsor of CN offering a new C14 with XLT coatings for $2500.00 plus $95.00 shipping. One day sale and all were gone in a day. No wonder, that price is better than I've seen them offered for used in the AM!
I wonder how many they had in stock and why the price dropped so much...

If you watched the History channel Saturday, you might have caught the segment in which former CIA pilot John Lear(of the Lear jet family)claimed he went RVing with Bob Lazar, set up his Celestron telescope, and observed flying discs over area 51.
You can read about here:
http://www.thewhyfiles.net/boblazar.htm
I do I believe it? No, but since the forums in the AM appear gutted and other MIA or KIA, I thought I'd add a little spice for anyone interested in a good chuckle.
Trivia fact: Al Gore's roommate at Harvard was Space Cowboy's star, Tommy Lee Jones.

James DellaPenna said:

Any reviews or comments on the Evolution mounts? Anywhere?

Does this help?
http://astronomynow.com/2015/02/25/celestron-nexstar-evolution-9-25-review/
and:
http://techaeris.com/2014/06/18/celestron-nexstar-evolution-8-review/

Nice image. I viewed it last night(10-13)from Mt Pinos and it was quite impressive. I saw it thru a fellow observer's 12.5" truss dob and it appeared headed for a double star at the time.