Lidl "Computer Telescope" forum

"Seanie wrote: well spin doctors get well paid these days. unless mike has won the lottery and is not letting us know l .
stephen.

You'll know Mike has won the lottery when he goes to the next star party with a 24 inch goto Dob, with a Nagler binoviewer and a complete set of Nagler eyepieces to go with it. :lol:

Dave - naaah - when he tells us he's booked a flight on the next Branson spaceship and wangled two hours a day on Hubble :shock:

Dave

PS - see you all in a couple of weeks with a report on Starhill Inn

Got the autostar cable for the ETX-70 in the post today.

Its not something that you can make yourself, so you do need to buy it in order to update the autostar.

It connects to the serial port of a PC, or the USB port in my case via a serial adaptor.

Supplied on the CD are starry night 2.1.3 (very old, its now on version 5) and a demo of the astronomers control panel (advanced features disabled after 30 uses).

The contol panel is capable of moving the scope, now to get that working under unix...

You can download the autostar update software form meade, however there are no firmware updates available. What this does let you do is update the database of comets etc.

Is it worth getting? Well if you want to control the scope remotely from a PC its a must. If you just want to update the occasional comet, there is little pointsince you can enter this manually into the autostar.

Cheers,
~Al

Don't suppose there is an astronomy club in the Kildare/Newbridge area?
Plan to bring the ETX out on the Curragh some night, should be dark enough- provided the moon disappears.
Got the scope out to look at the moon and a brief look at Saturn. Finding it hard to alight the autostart- I think the scope itself is 10 degrees out when it's in the 'home' position. Maybe someone can look at their scope- when I set the vertical access to 0 degrees, it's not perpendicular to the tripod, it's pointing 10 degrees skyward. Is this right??

Maybe someone can look at their scope- when I set the vertical access to 0 degrees, it's not perpendicular to the tripod, it's pointing 10 degrees skyward. Is this right??

Mine is the same, don't know if it should be - haven't had time lately to do anything about it.

If you are having trouble aligning, check that the location is set properly in the autostar. Took me about 20 minutes to cop onto this the other night!

Time and date are fine because it asks you, location however you need to go and set yourself.

Cheers,
~Al