Observing Night – Sept 11, 2013

I did some research during the day and found I needed to train the telescope motors so the AutoStar knew about the telescope it was connected to. So, I did that.  I had hoped to do it during the daylight but did it right before heading outside.

I did the AutoStar alignment and it did seem a little closer but still off.  I tried going back to the Great Globular Cluster (M13) using the GOTO and it was nearby but still not centered.  So, I was tired from this being the fourth observing night, frustrated with the straight through finderscope and my feet even hurt.  So, I decided to call it a night earlier and re-evaluate.

One of my thoughts was maybe the telescope is just old.  To be honest, it is over 14 years old and I had never really used it until now.  Second, maybe my skies are too light polluted.  Third, I didn’t give my eyes a chance to dark adjust.  Lastly, maybe I just needed more aperature.  I was planning that my next step would be to try some simple astrophotography but that seemed fruitless since I didn’t find any to photograph.  Maybe the ETX would be fine for the moon and the planets.  Since I figured out how to polar mount, the mounts should auto-track without the AutoStar which was one of the downsides when pointing the telescope out an open window.

I will need to do some thinking.