Posts Made By: Kirby Benson

Dear Group,

I have two questions and am hopeful someone will answer them.

1. Is the Orion Apex 127 and the Orion StarMax 127 the same
scope? It appears so - just that the StarMax has the mount and
extras.

2. I have been reading that the Apex 127 is very good for the
planets but have seen little concerning its capabilities
regarding star clusters, nebula and galaxies that are my main interest right now. Can anyone shed some light on this?

Thank you,
Kirby Benson
Las Cruces, NM

Yesterday my wife found a telescope in one of the antique stores here in Las Cruces and suggested I might want to look at it. As soon as I saw it today I was very impressed by the mount but was unable to identify it - I have a couple of cheaper mounts and they are nothing like this one. See images please. The scope is a celestron (4.5 about 32 inches long and about 26 inches from approx front of primary mirror to the secondary mirror - 660mm focal length?) that was made in Japan and I think the mount is from Japan also - the characters on it look Japanese, not Chinese. It aslo has the see though hole in the mount for (I guess, polar alignment - I will need some help with this - is there a eyepiece that goes there?) I am a newbie but thought this was most likely a very good deal at 195.00. Could someone please identify the mount?

I just purchased my first decent mount. The Vixen Polaris mount I asked about a few days ago on this list. Well...I am one of those guys that can walk into a Lowes or Home Depot and become transported into a state of rapturous delight in the tool department. So, when I saw a picture of an equatorial mount this past summer I knew this was something I wanted to master, to own, to covet, this "thing" - no Goto for this kid, but rather the agonizing deliberation of learning this funny gizmo with dials and gadgets. There has been some success along the way with less than accurate and helpful mounts (several DSOs). But now….approaching some measure of perfection with this beautiful little mount…who knows what the skies will reveal?

My question: This mount has a place for a polar scope. But alas, no polar scope came with the mount. Is it possible to adapt a finder scope (such as a celestron or orion 6 X 30 or such to this mount?

Thanks,

Kirby
PS - I can see this is becoming an expensive addiction.

Dear Astromarters,

My question may seem strange but I have a small scope I want to put up for sale on astromart and ask that 'buyer pays shipping' as I see on a lot of ads. How is this generally handled when the buyer generally pays by pay pal, etc., at the time of the purchase? Is the buyer then trusted to send the shipping fee after it has been shipped?

Thanks,

Kirby Benson
Las Cruces, NM

From time to time I have seen requests for the old Vixen Skysensor Data tables on Astromart and Cloudy Nights. Thanks to Ray Ketchum I now have copies of the old Skysensor star data as well as the manual and have posted it to: ftp.louisebryant.com for downloading. They are in Adobe format. This is for those of us who are creeping along with those old SuperPolaris mounts and motors.

Thank you all for your responses - you have been most helpful. I will miss my almost 3 degrees on the little 114 F/5 I have but need more light and distance. Santa is coming and the Apex 127 can be under the tree.

Kirby

I have the Konus 114/500 F/4.39 as a starter scope and find it is quite nice and under good conditions I can see clusters, galaxies up to about 7.5 Mag. The double cluster in Cassiopia is breathtaking. M 33, IC 1848, IC 1805, M 103, M 34, M-32 and M 110 next to M 31 to name a few are possible to see under good conditions. The mount that comes with this scope is garbage - tripod is OK for this light scope. With a 26mm Meade super plossel you can get about 2.70 degrees of view. Now that I have used it for awhile I have gotten apature fever and want more.

Gamini - I upgraded the mount a bit by purchasing a Meade 395 from Russel Optics in AZ - it was 45.00. Not a great mount but for the money it does work and gets me within a few degrees of where I want to go and sometimes right on! I consider these events a part of the astronomy learning curve. By comparison to other scopes, the Konus scope is very inexpensive and in my judgement a good way into the field - I like it and it is easy to take on camping trips where the sky in New Mexico is great. If you want to read some horror stories there is a thread here on "the worst scope buy". Even the experts get burned from time to time. I have a Orion 114/1000 F/8.7 coming I bought on ebay and will see what it turns out to be. Next scope will be more apature. I am considering the Apex 127 but may make the move up to a 8" dob.

Here is the scope and the mount together.