Telescope Reviews: Re: Waiting on my ETX-80 AT BB

The scope arrived today and I took it out for first light tonight. Thick, broken cloud cover so I was limited in what I could see. Mostly I wanted to see how the Go To worked. It worked great! I did a two star align and it worked great the first time. Used the only stars I could see thru the clouds initially, which were Arcturus and Altair. It would try to slew to each one and was off maybe 5 or 10 degrees each time, but when I manually slewed to the stars the alignment was successful. I then had it Go To Deneb (about the only other star I could see) and it was spot on! Then the moon....again, right on the money. Later, Spica. Dead center. Finally enough clearing for M5, which was, again, almost perfect.

So I'm very happy with how the Go To works. Why is it the ETX Go To is so much better than the Nexstar's? I mean there was no hassle with having to make certain the last bursts for alignment were "down and to the right" in order to tighten up the gears or anything like that.

So far my only criticism is the noise (sounds like it is sending morse code to the aliens) and the fact that in looking through the two different eyepieces (the one on top and the one in the back)they don't hit the same object--aren't lined up.

All in all, a great scope so far!

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Gordon Leidner

Zhumell 10 inch Dob
Nextar 8SE
Meade ETX80 AT
Orion 8x56 Mini Giant Binocs
Hyperion 24mm, 17mm, 13mm, 8mm, 5mm
Meade LPI

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