other telescope accessories

easy to use and great for educational purposes June 14, 2000
The Autostar is so decadent! I almost feel guilty for using it. But it is so easy to use and enhances the ETX-90EC scope so much that I use it all the time.

Set-up and locating the reference stars is fairly easy, and it is so much fun to take the tour of the sky. I've used this several times in an educational setting and it is fantastic for quickly pointing out stars and other celestial objects. In addition, it expands on the standard controller, giving you nine variable speeds instead of the standard four.

Once you use the Autostar you will never go back.

We purchased the ETX 125 and we found the Autostar to be necessary.

It was very easy to plug into the telescope and turn on, but getting the telescope aligned was another story. The first night we went out with just the Autostar and the telescope, assuming that we would have enough to get started. We were very wrong.

In order to align the telescope and get the Autostar working, the unit first asked us to find true north. Yikes! We gave it a rough guess. We were off compleetely, we would find out the next evening. Next was the exact time, which we also guessed on our inaccurate watches. Then we picked the nearest city, which is about 30 minutes away. Then the unit asked us to find two stars in the sky and identify and align them in the telescopeÕs eyepiece. The stars that the Autostar gave us to find were not exactly well-known stars, and they werenÕt in a part of the sky that was devoid of other bright stars. Without a map of the sky, we were lost. Pollox, Rigel, Castor were some of the stars we have come to know well through the Autostar. Needless to say, we did not get the Autostar working that night.

The next night, we went out equipped with not only the scope and the Autostar unit, but also a compass (to find north), a detailed map of the sky (to find the stars it was asking us to), and a watch that had accurate time on it. Before we headed out, we took the time to enter in our exact latitude and longitude into the Autostar. That night was a great success. After a short time spent aligning our two base stars in the scope, we were off to explore the universe and beyond. We saw Saturn, Venus, Jupiter, the Pleiades, the Orion Nebula and several Messier objects that evening.

I highly recommend the Autostar, but wish that the booklet would have warned us that we needed to be prepared with the compass, star map, latitude/longitude, and exact time to make our experience with it successful. The only drawback to the unit was that it needs to be aligned and reset every time it is used, but itÕs not like there are other competing units to use. ItÕs well worth the money, and enhances the experience with any Meade scope.

I first grew acquainted with Autostar about 6 months ago (albeit the 494 model) on the ETX-70 AT, and had some accuracy issues the first few times I used it. They were easily fixed, though, with a good drive training (on a power pole about a mile and a half away) and careful motor calibration. That was in May, and except for when the batteries are low, I haven't really had problems since.

In late June, I moved up to the LXD-55 6 inch Shmidt-Newtonian (which uses the same 497 Autostar as the ETX line), and after one repair call for a motor problem it has easily met my expectations for visual work. While the short focus Newtonian may have a wider field of view and a much better sigting scope than the ETX's (as well as significantly more aperture for under $800), keep in mind that it must be POLAR aligned which is MUCH more difficult than an ETX Alt-Az procedure. I usually cheat and use Polaris instead of the true North Pole, but my accuracy is still predictibly within 30-45 arcminutes (1/2-3/4 of a degree or easily within the view of a 26mm eyepiece) on 90-95 percent of the slews with a rough setup.

Here's how to get the thing to work the way its supposed to on an ETX when you first get it. Do the first 6 in daylight to make the setup easier:
*Skip Time for now
*Enter Date (if you will observe that night) and nearest city
*Enter your observing site name and adjust your latitude and longitude (use topozone.com or a topomap to find your location to the nearest minute (60th of a degree)) for your site
*Train the drive using a distant (1 mile or more) object. Procedure is in manual. If done well you should not need to do it again for months
*calibrate motors
*turn off telescope
That night (or any night):
*set up and level telescope (use torpedo level and rotate tube to check level). This is only necessary if you know that your site is significantly (5 degrees or more) off or your tripod is set to less than maximum height
*Aim north at Polaris (the North Star). Do NOT use a compass-it is often as much as 14 degrees off from true north. Use the two stars at the end of the big dipper to aim at the first bright-ish star at the tail of the little dipper. Align finder scope if necessary her.
*level tube by bringing it straight down to horizontal
*start alignment (easy at first, two star when you know the sky better). push the down scroll button if the star is behind a tree or other barrier. center in the eyepiece, not just the sighting scope. Press enter. Repeat for other star (preferably far from the first one-the farther the better)
*Enjoy!

For the long term, get a star atlas or astronomy program and a range of good eyepieces/filters.

I deducted a star for the fact that Autostar displays thousands of objects nightly that are below the horizon and that the NGC and IC catalogs are nearly worthless unless you have a comprehensive atlas and know the catalog number of the object(s) you are looking for.