Posts Made By: Gustavo Westin

I am planing a trip to South America, and of course, I will not be able to take my 10'' Dob. I am about to buy a new and more portable telescope, that fits into the airplane overhead compartment. Can anyone tell me if a 8'' schmidt cassegrain can do this job, or is it too big? Should I go with a 6'' instead? Would you guys recommend a special case for these scopes?

Thanks,

Gus

Hi guys! Just got this new telescope a celestron C6 -SGT With a german goto equatorial mount. So far i am still struggling with the alignment, and it woul be great if you guys could give me some advice. First problem is that the altitude axis on the mount does not go below 30 degrees, so I removed the front altitude screw, and now I can go down to 28, which is suboptimal as my latitude is N 20. I wander if this difference is important enough to mess up with the entire alignment. Should I polar align the telescope with polaris, or not? Is it important to point the telescope towards Polaris before start the 2 star alignment process, or any position is ok? I am pretty sure I am putting the coordinates, date, and time correctly, and I am following all the alignment steps as instructed in the manual, but w/o good results. Another question is can I replace the telescope bar counter weight to a lighter one? The one that came with the telescope weights 11lb. If so what is the minimum weight that I can use, given my OTA is a C6? A telrad, finder scope and a diagonal are the only extras.
I might be messing up somewhere, because even centering the objects in the eyepiece using the directional buttons, and Adding 3 calibrating stars the goto accuracy still sucks, with an error of around 20 degrees. PLEASE somebody help!!!

Thanks for reading!

Gustavo