Posts Made By: Chris Muscatello

Hi,
I recently purchased an LX200 EMC second-handedly. The person selling the telescope to me had told me that he had encountered a problem with the computer booting up past the "Meade" reading on the hand controller. He said he resecured some connection on the motherboard, and it seemed to be working just fine. Well in any event, we worked out a cheap deal so that if this happened frequently, I could just contact Meade for a new electronics kit which would replace the guts and the controller. Well I would prefer to not do this as it would cost $500 and I think I have isolated the problem. I believe this problem has something to do with that metal plate on the motherboard that has that colored piece of plastic on it. It's located near the center of all the circuitry. Basically I'm wondering if anyone has encountered this problem before, and if so, what he did to remedy it. It just seems like a faulty connection to me as sometimes the computer will boot and other times it will not. I wish I had a schematic drawing available so I could be a little more specific, however Meade doesn't put that out for obvious reasons. The scope is only a year and a half old and does have the newest software before the GPS came out.

PLEASE! Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Chris

Hello all,

I am trying to decide what sky program to purchase with which I will also have full control of my LX200. I already fabricated the RS232 cord and all is find and dandy. Meade suggests Epoch 2000, but is this the best choice? What does everyone else use? What fuctions are you particularly fond of with the program you use. How much does your program run as far as cost? And where can I find it?

Thanks!
Chris

Hello everyone!

I am a newcomer to the whole astrophotography scene, but I am a veteran to astronomy. I acquired a used classic 8" LX200 from a guy here on astromart.

My questions are as follows:

1.) When polar aligning, I level the base pretty accurately. I set up the wedge so it's pointing north (I use the supplied compass to get a rough estimate and make adjustments as I go along). Then I set the DEC to 90 and RA to 0 as the hand controller says. I center Polaris making wedge adjustments only and press enter just as the manual says. Then it slews to a portion of the sky and says to center Enif. Now at this step, the scope is a good couple degrees away from Enif, but I use the hand controller to slew the rest of the way and center the star in the EP and press enter. So then I want to check the accuracy of my alignment. When I enter polaris, it slews right to it and usually nails it. Then I enter Altair and have the scope GoTO it, but it's still a good degree or two off. Shouldn't the accuracy be a little closer than this? I didn't get the chance last night, but should I try syncing on altair and bouncing back and forth between it and polaris making wedge adjustments on polaris and hand controller adjustments with Altair?

2.) Even though the tracking probably wasn't very good, I thought I would test out some film, the camera, get some practice with exposures, etc so I attached the camera to the visual back and planned on taking a few short exposures (3 minutes or so) of some brighter dense star fields in Saggitarius. I have an Olympus OM-1 with a Beattie Intenscreen. Now I know a very challenging part of astrophotography is focusing, but am I supposed to get pointpoint stars through the viewfinder or are they supposed to be out-of-focus looking even when it's the most in focus I can get it? The adapter I have has a small 2" or so tube extender which would increase the focal length of the system, right? I tried the camera adapter both with and without the extender and I noticed very slightly that without was easier to focus than with. So I guess focusing with a shorter focal length is easier than with a longer one.

3.) With all the accessories I got, there was an f/3.3 focal reducer. I tried it with the camera and all I saw was a huge out of focus star (and what appeared to be some serious vignetting). Well I tried focusing the blob, but the out-of-focus object was not focusing at all. Is this reducer going to be of any use to me?

I think that's all so far. I know I should be starting with piggyback photography, but while I wait for the mount to come in, I decided to try my hand at prime focus.

Any suggestions and all responses will be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!
Chris

Hello all,

The following is a picture I took with my OM-1 piggybacked on my 8" LX200. The camera had the standard 50mm lens and was set at f/2.8 and exposure time was 15 minutes. One thing about the picture: I know I have to adjust the piggyback bracket because as you can see in this particular picture, the tube of the scope shows up in the image. However, my question is the following: It looks as if there was vignetting in this picture. The corners and even the top of the image look darker than the central portion of it. This happened in almost all of my pictures. I didn't think vignetting would be this drastic in a 50mm lens. Is this normal? I'll have to work on the sky fog factor as you can see. I bet a lot of the stars are washed out with that super light background. Still in the early learning stages, so if anyone could pass on some advice I'd really appreciate it!

Thanks in advance!
Chris

Another note: the N and S controls (altitude) don't work either. Could this be connected to the reason the computer is acting up? Any suggestions?

Chris