Posts Made By: Greg Kim

Hi Don, you may have solved the issue already, my only comment if you have not is planets are not used to align a scopes optics only stars. Also in general you only adjust 2 of the 3 screws on the corrector (secondary mirror) to realign the optics.

Hi Jerry,
Good choice with going with the dob (the 10" is the way to go over the 8") and because you are going to have non users look through the scope and planets are the main attraction then tracking is a must.
What I've found is by the time someone who has never looked through a telescope eyepiece finds how close to get to eyepiece, focuses on the object and then tries to see what you describe to them the object has moved out of the field of view. You will most likely be at 100x-150X on planets to get the wow factor and that will cause the object to move quickly out of the field of view and for sure out of the sweet spot of the EP in general.
In most 10" dobs a 10 MM or a 8 MM eyepiece will be great on planets.

Hi Scott,
There is one important thing that is not intuitive on shipping a mount and that is NOT to lock the mount axis locks. They must stay free so any shock to the equipment does not stress the gears. To move freely means the gears do not get stripped or bent. This applies to the locks on the Meade 16" fork mount as well on both axises.
On the 16 in cassegrain meade turn the focus knob clockwise till it stops and this will pull the main mirror all the way to the back of the scope housing and keep it from flopping around. If you look inside the tube you can see the mirror moving closer to the back if you are turning in the right direction (in case I'm mistaken on the direction of turning).
Note if there is a "focus lock" knob loosen it first before doing the above.
Then if you like you can turn it back the lock position when you have the mirror at the back of the housing. The purpose of the mirror lock is to stop the mirror from moving once the scope is focused, so doing the focus knob routine above is more advised.

LAST when shipping anything especially astronomy gear there must be no shifting of the item in the package. This means when you shake the box you must not have any movement of the item in the box. If it moves it breaks or causes something else to break as it moves around in side the box as it's thrown around.

Hi Lee,
Sure you can change the fork mounted C8 to equatorial, which fork mount do you have? In general you should be able to remove the tube/ota/scope body from the fork arms and then attach an appropriate mounting rail either a losmandy or vixen and then attach the scope to the matching equatorial mount saddle.
Tell me which fork mount you have and I should be able to guide you on disassembly (a photo would be helpful).

Regards,
Greg

Well after not observing for months (could even be close to a year) I saw a news bite about Mars and i didn't quite catch the story, but as I am always aware, I noticed Mars was very bright in the night sky. I figured the story must be about it being very close to earth, so I checked my planetarium software and I was right. 
 I decided to put my scope back to work (took a day or so to get things in order) and I was not disappointed there it was bigger than ever in the ep vs the tiny dot. 
 Funny thing was it was way back in 2003, August as a matter a fact I have a photo on the wall of Mars, when it was that big. 
 My revelation was wow, it was 15 year ago that I first saw Mars that big and it may be another 15 again so I'd better have a look now as it will a long wait to do this again!

Regards,
Greg
08/07/2018
11:53 Pm Pacific

Hi, 
   Before you replace look into the Satellite Week Number Roll Over "bug" ( WNRO ). This causes the date to be incorrect as of April 6 2019 or there about. Current work around is to turn off the GPS in the setup or Utilities menu and enter both the time and the date manually until there is an update.


Regards,
Greg 
06-23-2019

Originally Posted by Weiman Kissinger

Observing here on the East coast has been pretty much non-existent for the whole of August with record setting storms/cloud cover/rain.
I was going to set up my ES127 tonight for some tests of a PoleMaster and some quick views of Mars but I haven't seen any news of what's going on with the planet-wide dust storm.
Is it still raging on or is it possible to see some surface detail.
Any of you lucky guys in the south west know?

Thanks.
Weiman Kissinger

Hi Weiman,
                I have not observed since April and I heard that Mars was close as it was way back in the early 2000's, and I did notice a bright "star" out of place on Sunday night so I figured on Monday I'll give a look.  
 Anyway to answer your question is it possible to see surface detail   YES YES, it's as big as Jupiter in the eyepiece and as bright so if you need to use filters or even stop down the scope you will have a jewel in the sky and be able to the polar ice cap as well.  It is also high in the sky so resolution is aided the higher up it is and this is as high as it's been.  No matter what you have it will reveal detail. 

Regards,
Greg