Telescope Reviews: Wireless Observing Freedom

Steve,

Hi, let me take a crack at this then. First let me give you a bit of background and a list of reasons why I went this route. Being in business for myself now after many years in the high tech industry I have become a time management based professional, being such I rely heavily on a Palm PDA. It handles my bookings, my schedule, my billing, in field research notes, an electronic portfolio of my work and a myriad of other duties. Now I will be the first to admit to being a tech toy kind of guy but everyone that knows me professionally knows I don’t buy things I don’t use or cant get an ROI out of.

So, first off I am heavily invested in and use a Palm PDA, mine happens to be a Zodiac. I love to take advantage of things I use for business in my personal life as well; I hate carrying a Laptop and have a huge 17” one for work but don’t want to lug it around on my free time. So I went looking for a nice Planetarium and found Astromist which is awesome in its capabilities and does exactly what a laptop version would do, tell me what’s up, what’s coming up, where it is and hey I want to search by type of object too. Plus, it has pictures of everything it shows me, helps me locate it and has a beautiful presentation of the night sky in real time. Very little of the above can be handled as elegantly by the Celestron Hand Controller plus it’s a two line text display, a bit backward in this day and age of color LCD’s on phones. I’m not beating up Celestron either; they provide a great product for the price. I just like graphics and ease of use and am willing to pay for it.

Secondly, I hate cables! Being in Tech I have to live with them but I don’t have to like them. So I take every opportunity I can to get rid of or manage them in a way that minimizes their negative impact on my life. When it came to the hand controller on my NS11, the only thing I actually hated was the cabling from the HC to the fork arm. Not only is it too short but also the places where it connects are not optimum for use at all. Plus holding it in ones hand during use puts a possible wire tangle into the near future. A minor issue is that I am handicapped and the thought of more wires on the ground giving me one more opportunity to pull a Laurel and Hardy

and possibly damage my scope was abhorrent to say the least. So I always try to make my environment as safe as possible for me, and that means getting rid of wires & cables, BTW did I mention that I Hate cables

Third, I don’t think there is anything so complex to get this all working, I don’t think anyone should go buy a PDA and all the other things needed just to say they can run a scope wirelessly, but if you have a PDA with Bluetooth or a Bluetooth card and a scope and you like using graphical representations rather then textual displays to accomplish these tasks, then I think there is very little complexity involved in getting this to work.

One of the things I have found that really worked out well was demonstrated the last time I went observing with a bunch of my friends. None of them know anything about Astronomy and they all wanted to look at stuff but had no idea about what was up there, what it looked like or how to find it. But I could easily put an eyepiece in, show them how to focus and while standing well back with my other friends I could select an item in Astromist’s display and command the scope to slew there. My friends could remain at the scope and when the slew was finished start looking. I didn’t have to ask them to step aside, grab the HC, step through the much more cumbersome menus to see what cool stuff was up and then choose that to slew too and then step back away for my friends to get in again. This was a much friendlier and more socially pleasant experience of guiding someone in their first viewing through a scope. And, there were fewer cables for my friends to possibly trip over at the scope if they had moved anyway. One other aspect of this scenario showed itself when the people at the scope interrupted the group I was conversing with to ask if they could look at something else, well the group I was conversing with could all see the PDA display and all felt they could have input to what to look at as they viewed the display with me and asked questions about certain aspects and agreed as a group as to what they wanted to choose. Wow, a much greater social interaction then one person walking over and just taking control of a hand controller to decide what to show someone.

Another benefit directly to me is that I have been away from Astronomy for about 10 years, in that time I have become rusty as to what’s up and where it is, plus I truly enjoy sharing info about the items looked at with those around me. One reason I like small groups is that viewing things in the sky at night can start the most amazing where do we come from, where are we going, how old is the world conversations. And having the PDA right there with color pictures to pull up of Globular Clusters, Planetary Nebulas, Galaxies, etc… makes the viewing experience that much richer and informative. I also love having a database of facts at my fingertips, books and charts are so much harder to use under the night sky but a PDA is fast and can cull through information much more efficiently than I can with a book or magazine. I only wish Burnham’s Celestial Handbooks were in electronic form for PDA searching and perusal, what a great thing that would be. I love the myths and legends associated with the night sky and would love a reference on PDA so I could share those legends with others as well.

This reply has run on much longer than I intended, I’m sorry about that and sorry it wasn’t a simpler answer, but I do think you now have a few good reasons why someone would want to do this. One last thing, the Zodiac has an analog Joy Stick and slewing around in real time is really neat

, Hope you don’t mind just couldn’t resist.

Have a good one and Clear Skies to you

Rick

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NS11 GPS XLT Denk X-P Diag, DewBuster, d-Not heat, Losm weights, TV PCam, AZ shield, L Pad.