A cure for Zenith neck

Note: The following post was originally posted on January 2, 2012 but I added new information today in the comments as a result of communications with Vic Maris at Stellarvue.

I like the finderscope Meade includes on the LX200, but my neck and back disagree. Not only disagree, they finally rebelled a couple weeks ago while I was zeroing in on the Pleiades almost directly above my head.

So I ordered the Stellarvue F50-2 9x50mm Deluxe Finder scope from Oceanside Photo & Telescope (OPT) because it has a diagonal with a rotating back, so you can easily look through the eyepiece, whether your telescope is aimed at objects near the horizon or straight up, simply by loosening the rotator locking screw to adjust the eyepiece to the angle you want. All that stops it from rotating a full 360 degrees is my optical tube.

Support staff at OPT said my current Meade mounting rings will work with the Stellarvue finder. They were right, saving that expense. That doesn't happen often.

Also, the Stellarvue finder comes with a 1.25" 23mm eyepiece with reticle, but no illuminator. You have to buy the illuminator seperately... or not.

I have had a Meade 9mm eyepiece with illuminate reticle for a couple of years, but don't use it much due to its narrow true field of view in my telescope. I was happy to find that its illuminator screwed into the new Stellarvue reticle eyepiece and works perfectly.

So now I have two reticle eyepieces with different powers and fields of view that can share an illuminator. And, because the Stellarvue finder accepts other 1.25" eyepieces, I can use its 23mm reticle eyepiece on my telescope as well.

Here are my "first" impressions based on two nights of observations.

Is it bad karma between Windows 7 Professional and my LX200?

This is a follow-up to my post a couple of weeks ago. I was having problems connecting my HP notebook to my Meade LX200 so I could run AstroPlanner and SkyX Professional software.

Well... not really a "problem".... more than a problem: It just wasn't working. I won't repeat all the steps I took to try to find a solution, but you can read about them here: Problem connecting Meade LX200 to a computer

Since the last post, I received the Keyspan USB serial adapter. It works fine on my old computer running Windows XP. But the new adapter doesn't help my problem with my Windows 7 Professional notebook. Three adapters (Keyspan, Meade, Gigaware); no success.

So far I have eliminated the following possible culprits: bad RS232 port on the telescope; bad RS232 cable, bad or incorrectly wired RS232/Serial adapter; and bad USB serial adapter. I doubt my windows 7 notebook has a bad USB port (I tried all three).

That leaves just one possible reason for the problem: Windows 7 Professional does not like something, whether it is the cables, adapters, or telescope.

Problem connecting Meade LX200 to a computer

I spent a lot of time over the past two weeks trying to connect my HP Windows 7 netbook computer to my Meade LX200 telescope. Nothing I tried worked.

Then I posted a desperate cry for help on two forums (Stargazers Lounge and Cloudy Nights), emailed Tim Crawford (he's a mentor for the AAVSO), and emailed Paul Rodman, the creator of the AstroPlanner software I wanted to use.

Tim didn't have the answer, but he contacted other AAVSO members to ask if they had a solution. Similarly, Paul did not have the answer, but he posted my problem on the AstroPlanner Yahoo Group site.

The response from all of these sources was overwhelming. It's hard to diagnose this type of problem over the internet, but I got dozens of ideas from a lot of people.

As an aside, it is exciting to find how "connected" we are as amateur astronomers. I don't know anyone locally involved in astronomy, but I suddenly had lots of smart people helping me solve my problem, from around the world.

Anyway, back to the issue at hand. It was suggested that either Windows 7 was the problem, or my Meade USB/Serial adapter was the problem, or both. (Note: If the Meade adapter is the problem, I also had a problem with a Gigaware adapter previously. Some people told me Meade has sent out some bad adapters in the past year or so. Some of the testing I have planned next will help me figure out if I got a bad one.)

Book review: So you want a Meade LX Telescope

If, like me, you are a relative beginner and visual observer who uses your Meade LX 200 in alt/az mode, and don’t have an experienced mentor living nearby, you will likely find one or two dozen tips in this book that will help you. That made it worth buying for me.

• The book: So You Want A Meade LX Telescope! by Lawrence Harris, Patrick Moore's Practical Astronomy Series

I always dog-ear any of a book’s pages with useful information and figure that if a book has at least 10 dog-ears it was worthwhile. This book ended up with 13, so it “passes.”  Almost half of the book’s 230 pages are about software, primarily for astrophotography. I’m a visual observer, at least for now, so half the book didn’t matter to me, at least not yet.

I’ve had my Meade LX200 for a couple of years and still have lots to learn. There’s no group of amateurs locally, Meade users or otherwise, so my only support group has been “The Google” and a few forums. The problem with that is there is almost always too much information to sift through to find answers, and when you find them you can’t be certain they are correct. I have found a few websites, like Mike Weasner’s Cassiopeia Observatory, that share a lot of useful, accurate information. But I still needed more.

If I had an experienced mentor living next door, using the same telescope, I wouldn’t need this book. But I don’t. Instead, the book acted like a mentor with a lot of simple tips I guess I should have known or figured out, but didn’t. Here are a few of the author's tips: 

Lessons from observing the lunar eclipse

Here are four lessons I learned from getting up early this morning to view the lunar eclipse:

• Sloppy is okay
• Sleep is bad
• Don't breathe
• Back up

SLOPPY IS OKAY
I got up at 4:30am MST to set up my telescope. I had it outside covered all night, but now I had to get it aligned and ready. I didn't bother trying to center either of the two alignment stars, choosing to accept wherever the telescope pointed. That worked out fine. The telescope tracked the moon perfectly, at least for visual observing.

SLEEP IS BAD
I knew I wasn't going to see any of the total eclipse. "Red Mountain Observatory" is a significant exaggeration of the term "observatory." It's just my telescope on wheels that I roll out to view. But Red Mountain is no figment of my imagination. It looms large in the west. As a result, I knew I would not see any of the totality. And I knew it was going to be cold, okay - cool (26 degrees f and 47% humidity). So I was considering sleeping through it.