Posts Made By: Kevin Kauzlarich

This is the best write up I've seen. It's for the Super Polaris, but adjustment should be similar.

http://24.237.160.4/files/astronomy/Mounts/Vixen/SP/backlash_adjustment/index.html

Just out of curiosity, does anyone know why some deleted ads still have pictures attached, but no other information?

In the free category, you might also try Hnsky at:

http://www.hnsky.org/software.htm

Can be customized to include more stars than you probably can stand, and it also has telescope control through ASCOM interface.

Nice image (your Saturn as well), much more detail than I've been able to capture in my C8.

Hope you don't mind, but I couldn't resist working on a nice image for a change. I pushed the wavelets a little in Registax and adjusted the colors along with a slight unsharp mask in PSP. Also used my favorite, Salt and pepper filter in PSP to de-noise all my tinkering. You'd have to see my images to understand ..... they're, well, a little grainy to say the least. Thanks for sharing

I had exactly the same problem, with little use as well. As fast a mine
deteriorated, ~ 4 months, I'm surprised others haven't spoken up.

I broke out the black hockey tape (friction tape) and carefully put on about 4 wraps.
I carefully aligned the tape edge on one side, then trimmed the other side with
an exacto knife. Looks better than you'd imagine, and more functional than smooth AL.

You've got a lot of options, but I didn't find anything particularly easy or cheap when I was looking. If you plan on sticking to that price range, then I'd recommend checking out the Roboscope forum over at Yahoo. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RoboScope

One to the ideas these guys started was to use Meade DS motors and retrofit them to the other mounts. You can get a meade DS kit with Autostar pretty cheap these days, and then either make your own mounting brackets or buy a bracket set. The guys on the group can pont you in the right direction. Total should be less than $300.

But to be honest I ran the DS motor mod on my CG5 for over a year and had hit or miss luck. On more than one occasion it, mount and all, almost ended up in the pool! Respect for my OTAs is the only thing that saved it. Looking for a cheap GOTO system, I picked up a refurbished LXD55 mount from the Meade outlet for $242. I think they still come up from time to time, but you have to watch close. Surprisingly the mount worked well even with slipping gears and all. Yesterday, I moved the LXD55 motors to my CG5 and they worked like a dream. Not bad for $242 and I have the spare mount to pass on to my friends kiddies. Hope this helps ..........

Wow, sharp. Did you use the ST10Xe's full frame res of 2184 x 1472?

A little fuzzy to me, even though, still looks like you picked up some serious detail in the cloud bands. Looks like the new camera is a winner, can't wait till you have better seeing .... not as if the Bar isn’t high enough already for us aperture, camera, patience .... SKILL challenged folks ....

Ungratefull or not I don't know, but she's surely got to appreciate
that impressive armada of scopes and mounts! Once you get all the boxes
and gear stowed away and the buck's head I see lower left in the pic up on the wall, all will be
forgiven? My wife would definately call that a "Man" room ...............

Beautiful image, it's truly amazing what fine equipment and skill can produce these days.

Did you rotate the image during processing for effect? It seems to be a different view than what I rember from the eye piece?