Posts Made By: Richard Wallace

Hi Everyone,

I am new to astronomy, and I started out by purchasing a Celestron 114LCM go-to newtonian scope on amazon. I was extremely disappointed with it due to it being terribly cheaply made, and very unstable. I ended up returning it because the telescope would not stay in alignment. I picked up a used similar scope on craigslist for $40.. A celestron 114mm manual telescope with Equatorial mount. It is much much better.. But I still am having a heck of a time finding any objects. I'd like to try another go-to mount, but I am not sure which ones are worth it. I'd like to keep it at $500 or less for the mount... Any suggestions?

Oh and I also picked up a 5.1" meade newtonian OTA for free, (waiting for tube rings to come in from ebay).. I'd like the go-to mount to be sturdy enough to hold the 5.1" newtonian too.

Thanks!

Hi Everyone,

I am new to astronomy.. I picked up a nice used Celestron Nexstar 8SE off a nice guy here on the classifieds. I confirmed the alignment by having the telescope go to a handful of stars that I know of for sure, and I got it to align close to exactly spot on. I aligned up my telerad perfectly with the scope, and I got the alignment so close that every time I would go to a star It would be barely out of view, I would just need to hit the Left button once or twice.. So I believe my alignment is working great.

I went to view jupiter last night, around 10:30PM I started looking for it because SkySafari 4 showed it being high enough up in the south east sky. I tried for an hour.. But I could not see jupiter! .. I re- ran the alignment procedure 3 times to make sure.. Every time the scope went to where jupiter should have been, but no jupiter! I double checked each time by holding my phone up against my telrad and using Skysafari and Starchart, and it always was spot on or very close...

I used a 32mm wide eyepiece, so that is about 65x magnification.. Does anyone have any ideas of why I could not see it, or any tips to help? I'd love to view jupiter!

One thing to note, I Do have a significant amount of light pollution due to living about 2 miles outside of a decent sized city.. But the scope easily showed me tons of different stars with quite a bit of brightness...

Thanks!!