Total Beginner here Please help??

Re alligning at start up and GOTO accuracy.

Those little ETXs are all prone to backlash.ie you need to calibrate the drive motors regulary to maintain good gotos and aligning. There is a procedure known as training which helps a lot and only take a few minutes to do.

DB

I used a microsoft life cam attached to the end of my scope and just took a few snaps. I downloaded the programme registax it looks very complicated.

Rossa --

Registax is complicated, but it will make a HUGE difference in your images. (Basically, it adds together all the good parts of multiple images while throwing out the bad parts.)

If you're using a compass to find North, keep in mind that magnetic North isn't true North. (I think it's out by 10° or so in Ireland, but I can't remember.) And as David said, the ETX definitely needs Drive Training (to allow the GoTos to compensate for backlash). Weasner's ETX site (mentioned by Frank Ryan aka Barberskum) is the best place to read up on it (the Meade manual isn't the best at explaining it -- or much else).

Cheers,
-- Jeff.

Hi Rossa and welcome.
I had an ETX70 for a while and it makes for a great pickup and run scope.
The lads above all gave good advice, make sure you use the 3x barlow when imaging Mars and wait until you see the moon in a week or when its back, it'll knock your socks off.
You might want to get a main adapter to run the scope, the batteries will die after a few nights and the scope will start doing some mad things.
How do you find the gotos interms of accuracy (presuming that you've trained the drives now). When i had it it managed to place the object in the field of view of the low power eyepiece.
As for objects, try (m=messier)
M42, M45, M35, ngc884, ngc869 & m31 for starters, use low power eyepieces for these.
If you want to dabble in registax, have a read of
www.irishastronomy.org/boards/viewtopic.php?t=5655
Have fun.

well I trained the drives earlier this evening and seemed a simple enough process...have to wait for clear weather its pouring here all evening getting rid of all that snow we got this morning...anyhoo thanks for the advise...much appreciated...yeah looking forward to trying it out on the moon. Ill do a bit more reading with registax

Hi Rossa,

I admit, i'm far from an expert astronomer (unlike alot of the guys here)
But its a great thing to get into.

Thats a good starter 'scope there. I had alot of problems with myown 'scope, but if you calabarate the motors, train the drive, then try a three star alignment it should work for you.

Hope everything goes well for you.