Thanx for the details. I just got in from the tropical forest.. Now I've
got everything opened up so that it will dry out. Anyway I got some detail
of Mars thru the haze, Saw a little fuzzy M13 and took a quick ccd shot of
it, well at least the bottom part of it, and did a nice visual split of both
parts of epsilon lyra. I did a pin hole collimation in the house this
afternoon and the stars looked pretty sharp tonight despite the haze. I did
see fuzzy stuff around the doubles, but I'm not sure I'd call them
diffraction rings.

I did see nice concentric rings when I did the pinhole alignment in the
house. All of the rings were evenly spaced and concentric around the black
center. The only thing I wasn't sure about was the fact that the outer ring
and a ring toward the inside appeared brighter than the rest. The pinhole
was only about 25 ft away from the aperature. Should all of the rings be
the same brightness?


-----Original Message-----
Date: Tuesday, June 29, 1999 7:35 PM
Subject: Re: [M]: LX200 Solar GOTO... Fact or fiction?


>At 6:22 PM -0500 6/29/99, Fred Herrmann wrote:
>>By regular alignment your talking leveling and pointing North before
>>turn-on?
>
>This is described in gory detail in the archives but briefly.....
>level the tripod and orient the OTA so that it is level (use a
>torpedo level), ie pointing at the (true) horizon and pointing due
>south. (The control panel should be on the north side.) If you do
>that carefully, you will probably be able to find the Sun quickly by
>using the method of removing the eyepiece.
>
>>Since I've got the laptop out anyway as you suggested I plan on
>>using skyglobe and simply slewing to the RA and Dec. I've only had a
couple
>>hours of experience with the LX200, and I found that finding the sharpest
>>shadow on my rough driveway wasn't that easy..
>
>Right. After you get close remove the eyepiece and look down the
>barrel of the diagonal. When close to the Sun, you will see bright
>reflections off of the interior. Move the scope in the direction
>that seems to center them. When you get close enough the whole field
>will turn bright with the Sun's image. When you replace the eyepiece
>the Sun will be in the field or very nearly so.
>
>Bill Arnett
>http://www.seds.org/billa/
> "Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself." -- Richard Feynman
>

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