Accessories Reports

StellarCat

The generation two ServoCAT. Advanced tracking and GOTO for dobs.

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CN Report: William Optics vs Tele Vue Everbright Diagonal

Tom Trusock compares these two market leaders; the very popular but expensive TV Everbright v. the recently introduced and inexpensive William Optics New Generation model

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CN Report: A Digital Setting Circles Primer

Tom Trusock takes us through the care and feeding of these popular "push-to" setups

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CN Report: Argo Navis Review

Tom Trusock takes a look at the Argo Navis DSC controller by Wildcard Innovations, and contrasts it with the popular Sky Commander

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CN Report: StarGPS – add GPS to your Telescope

When the StarGPS unit was announced I was interested in the StarGPS because it automatically set the Autostar with the correct time and location without my intervention. I could simply turn on the scope and while setting up my observing table and chair the StarGPS unit would take care of setting the time and location.

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CN Report: CosmicOne SCT Cooler a.k.a. THE CAT COOLER Filtered air ventilation system for SCTs

The SCT Cooler is a fan-driven filtered ventilation system for a number of different commercial SCT's from 8 inches to 14 inches in aperture. The unit basically is a fan attached to a roughly conical blower body which is then mated to a long tube. The cooler sends filtered air directly into the center of the telescope's tube between the secondary mirror and the end of the SCT main baffle tube, while at the same time allowing air from inside the telescope to flow out along the inside of the it's baffle tube and exit through air holes near the end of the visual back of the instrument. Overall, the SCT Cooler appears to be well designed with fairly robust construction.

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CN Report: Coronado PST VS Coronado SolarMax 40

This summer, Coronado premiered their newest offering, the P.S.T, or Personal Solar Telescope. This instrument is advertised as an all-in-one H-Alpha viewing system allowing the user to have very good views of prominences and decent views of surface features too. It’s rating of <1.0Angstroms should theoretically fulfill that promise. The P.S.T. has an aperture of 40mm and is also threaded to accept a SolarMax 40 filter with T-Max tuner to bring the rating of the system to <.6Angstrom for better surface detail.

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CN Report: Portable Power and the Celestron Power Tank

In the past, power hungry astronomers used to run cords to the cigarette lighters in our cars, and hope that we didn’t drain the battery. If we did, hope that someone else was close enough to give us a lift. The ones with heavy requirements bought Marine or Deep Cycle batteries and made their own portable power stations.

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CN Report: Tele Vue Paracorr - Coma Corrector for Newtonians (Visual version)

The Paracorr comes with an 1.25" to 2" eyepiece adapter, and both the adapter and the unit itself use non-captive thumbscrews which bear up against brass sleeve rings to hold the eyepiece in place. These sleeves help prevent marring of the outer surfaces of the eyepieces when being used in the Paracorr.

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CN Report: Feathertouch vs JMI DX-1 vs Moonlite CR2 Focuser

I love focusing. It is one of the real tactile pleasures of astronomy and poor focusing can ruin the visual pleasures of the hobby. Perfect and unequivocal focus is needed to enjoy your collection of expensive and hard-earned toys. So, I have always loved fine focusing and fine focusers. This meant that I hated nearly all of the original stock focusers I got with my equipment.

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