require a list of the allignment stars in the celestron goTo

Fintan,

I think what the guys are saying is don;t worry about the names, just select what the telescope offers. If you have your mount roughly pointed north and the finderscope is lined up then all you do is centre the brightest star in your finderscope.

If you feel the need to actually choose the alignment stars then by all means download stellarium and pick two stars on either side of the east and west meridian before you go outside.

ah, i see. cool. ive been neglecting the finder scope actually, using only the telrad. il have to start taking the time to put on the finder scope anymore. that should teach me the names of many stars also. much better than learning from memory from my atlas, and then repeatedly drawing out the constellations and trying to ame the stars. Thanks all.

Fintan --

I don't know of one for the Celestron, but this link points to a PDF document which has a handy star chart of all the Meade AutoStar alignment stars. I printed it out and laminated it and keep it with my scope.

www.weasner.com/etx/autostar/AlignmentStars497A4.pdf

At a guess, I'd bet there's a good deal of overlap between the Celestron and Meade choices.

Cheers,
-- Jeff.

Fintan

In the Cg5 mount, the main alignment stars are (with English constellation names)

Vega - alpha Lyra
Deneb - alpha Cygnus
Dubhe - alpha Ursa Major
Rasalhague - alpha Ophiuchus
Mizar - zeta Ursa Major
Albireo - beta Cygnus
Capella - alpha Auriga
Mirfak - Alpha Perseus
Menkalinan - beta Auriga
Hamal - alpha Aries
Alpheratz - alpha andromeda
Mirach - beta andromeda
Caph - b Cassiopeia
Scheat - beta Pegasus
Navi - gamma Cassiopeia

note. Algenib is also listed, usually this is gamma Perseus, but is also a name sometimes used for Mirfak!

Hope this helps.

Sorry Fintan

In answer to your first question, if you have a star's name, just enter it in wikipedia, and you will learn everything you need to know, and more! (with the usual warning that wikipedia is not always to be trusted completely. It's ok with most astronomical subjects though).

Hi fintan,

if your looking for a good atlas try "NIGHT SKY ATLAS" by DK i had problems like you and i found this book easy to understand, it has see threw pages of the main constellations....a good week of study of it an youl be able to look up and see the shape of any the main ones or buy a celestron sky-scout i got 1 from santa its excellent

ps: what i mean by see threw pages is you have a page with the constellation in star form then you have a second page that covers the star page with the stars joined up and named

book is only €21