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jsmiller58
sage
Reged: 06/19/06
Posts: 200
Loc: Out there, Way out there
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Re: A Case for GOTO
09/26/07 10:48 AM
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I personally agree 100% that GOTO is the way to go. However, as with many if not all things, what is important to someone is, well, what is important to them... If what is important to you is to learn the night sky like the back of your hand, then a GOTO is kind of like riding a bike for all your life with training wheels while trying to emulate Lance Armstrong. If on the other hand what is important to you is to see as many things that are in the heavens that you can, well, then as you say a GOTO is unmatched...!
Now, the quality (and I am afraid, price) of the GOTO mount makes all (most of?) the difference in the world... My first GOTO was a relatively inexpensive Orion Atlas EQ-G mount with an 11" SCT. I call it my "I'll GOTO wherever I want to GOTO and most of the time I don't want to GOTO where you me want to GOTO" mount... This was next joined by a most wonderful Losmandy GM-8 Gemini mount that is right on the mark the VAST majority of time (the difference between VAST and ALL being mostly attributable to "pilot error") and is a great mount for a smaller telescope, so I had to buy a 90mm APO refractor. In October these two will be joined by an AP 1200GTO mount, which I understand is almost supernatural in its ability to get a GOTO right and has a larger payload capacity - which means I am now shopping for a 14"-16" SCT, and building an observatory to house it in.
Wait, maybe I should have stuck with binoculars...!
James
"The path to someplace extremely warm is lined also with great ideas...", or something like that.
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- 90mm WO refractor
- 11" Orion SCT
- PlaneWave CDK17 (the "Cosmic Cannon")
- MallinCam Hyper Color Plus
- More eyepieces than I can use, but not one Ethos... Hmmm... How soon till Christmas?
- Atlas EQ-G mount
- Losmandy GM-8 mount
- AP 1200GTO mount
- Pro-Dome-15 Obs
- A wife who doesn't understand my fascination with faint fuzzies, but encourages me anyway
- A 16 year old son who calls me just another nut job with an observatory
- A 14 year old son that still thinks I am cool
Edited by jsmiller58 (09/26/07 11:08 AM)
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