Alliance for Astronomy, Inc.

To set it up, Al points it to the Zenith and presses a button on the controller. Because the scope has set there for the past 6 years and was carefully leveled, Al has a mechanical stop calibrated exactly at the vertical position so that was a matter of seconds. Next, Al points it to the NCP which, again, takes seconds because calibration marks have been set and presses another button on the controller. Note: we did this before it got dark.

It is not go-to (yet!), but we pushed it around to Jupiter when it appeared in the twilight (there is a Telrad and 4-in f/4 reflector for finder). Upon checking that Jupiter was in the field, press a couple of buttons on the hand pad to lock the clutches and the tracking takes over. If the object is not in the center of the field, it is easy to slew it there and the tracking is smooth and accurate. We left an object for 30 minutes or more at 400x and it only drifted 1/4 the way across the field.

There are encoder outputs on the controller, so I feel certain that we can feed these into the appropriate computer program (Guide 8?) to have a full push-to capability. To get go-to capability, I will, of course, consult with Bob K. but it could be as simple as changing the tiny stepper motors for more robust DC synchros, but another possibility I see is to put separate slewing motors on, use the encoder outputs for feedback and control the electric clutches off to slew and back on to track.

While mostly cloud free, the skies were not the best - high humidity and a bit of haze (just like St. Louis this time of year) and a full moon rising. Nevertheless, Jupiter showed more bands and color than I have ever seen with my 10-in. It appeared that the moons were different sizes. We looked at M4 and M3 which were washed out due to the conditions, but still better than we would have seen in any lesser scope. The optics appear OK.

The sale includes the turret eyepiece holder with 4 eyepieces - a 30 mm wide angle, and 3 Naglers (20, 13, 9 mm). I had never looked through Naglers and I’m here to tell you they are great. There is a Paracor built into the base of the turret which changes the f/# from f/4 to f/4.5 and it seems to do a good job on the coma. That means the 9mm eyepiece yields 400x. The 30 mm eyepiece yields 120x and a 6.7 mm exit pupil.

The field de-rotator is built in to the eyepiece plate and runs all the time the motors are tracking, so photography should be a snap (and, I think, Al’s published images support this).

The focus is a bit stiff by ‘usual’ standards but it has a large knob and there is no shake or jitter when twisting it. The eyepieces can be parfocalized and the turret works smoothly with detents at each position. There is a five-hole filter wheel in the turret, one clear, one dark and RGB (or whatever). The wheel takes 48 mm filters.