Accessories Reports Archives

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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CN Report: Shootout of the Reticles - The Kufeld TELRAD (tm) Vs. Rigel QUICKFINDER

The first thing I noticed was that the QuickFinder required a bit more precise positioning of the user's eye to see the two red rings than the Telrad's reticle did. This is probably due at least in part to the smaller window of the QuickFinder. If I put my eye right up to the window, it was easy to see the rings, but as I moved back slightly, the positioning became a bit more difficult to maintain, although I still had little trouble doing it. As I moved back, other problems began to crop up with the view in the Rigel QuickFinder.

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BC&F Astro Engineering Bino Mate

The Bino Mate wins the prize as the lightest binoviewer I’ve ever used. Stay with light weight eyepieces and no problems occur in balancing a telescope. The small refractor I use is a Tele Vue TV76, mounted on a Celestron NS114 mount. With the Bino Mate in place and a pair of Orthos or Ultimas, the scope didn’t have any trouble hitting its GOTO targets or tracking them once it found them. I didn’t hear any sign of strain on the altitude motor wherever it was pointed.

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CN Report: Celestron F/6.3 Reducer/Corrector (Model # 94175)

With many of the modern Schmidt-Cassegrain telescopes (SCTs), the longer effective focal length can be a bit of a hastle, limiting the field of view and increasing the length of exposure time needed for some kinds of astrophotograpy. To compensate for this, many amateurs employ an optical device known as a telecompressor, or, more commonly, a "focal reducer" to bring the image scale back down. Celestron has produced its own "reducer/corrector" for its f/10 SCTs, allowing a somewhat shorter focal length and a flatter image field.

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CN Report: The Denkmeier II: Evolution of the Species

First off, with the Denk II, Denkmeier Optical now touts the fact that their optical components are made and coated entirely in the USA, and that the coatings on the beam splitter were formulated specifically for the Denk II with peak transmission in the 656.33nm range. (This bodes very well for you Hydrogen Alpha lovers.)

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CN Report: DOB DRIVER II by TECH2000

Users of Dobsonian telescope mounts are becoming more demanding of their systems. More and more, the Dobsonian mount is veering away from Mr. Dobson’s original concept of the cheapest possible but still functional telescope system. Extravagant optics, oversized elevation bearings, elegant structural designs, exotic materials or rollers in the azimuth bearings, digital setting circles, and even GoTo and tracking capabilities are becoming relatively common.

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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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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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StellarCat

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

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Denkmeier Dual SCT Power x Switch

The incredible Denkmeier Dual SCT Power x Switch. Switch magnification on the fly while binoviewing.

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CN Report: Observing Chair Shootout – Walt’s Observing Chairs, StarStep and the StarBucket Observ...

If you’ve got a moderate sized dob (eyepiece height up to around 80”) and just need a 6” to 12” step up – this is the perfect chair. On the down side, if you intend to be seated during much of your session – I’d probably go with one of the others - especially if you are a larger observer.

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Orion SKYGLOW Broad-band Light Pollution Filter

There has been considerable controversy concerning the effectiveness of various broad-band “Light Pollution Reduction” filters ever since the first decent ones appeared in the early 1980's. Some observers contend that

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CN Report: The Night Vision Astronomy BIPH

Tom reports on his first experiences with the upcoming Binocular Photon Machine (video included)

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CN Report: DGM Optics OIII Filter

DGM Optics OIII Filter

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CN Report: DGM Optics GCE Filter

Broadband "Light Pollution" filters have often been the subject of some discussion or even heated debate among amateur astronomers when it comes to their effectiveness.

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Accessory Caps from EyepieceCaps.com

Tired of trying to find those black accessory caps you dropped while observing at your dark site? Astro Caps may have a fix for you....

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CN Report: The DGM Optics NPB Nebula Filter

The NPB filter is a multi-layer interference filter which uses thin-film dielectric coatings to produce sharp passbands at a high level of transmission.

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HA Solar Observing on a Budget

Before the introduction of the annual NEAF solar party in the courtyard, a couple of demonstration Ha-filtered telescopes were usually set up by the side entrance.

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CN Report: The Abell Planetary and Hickson Group Observers Guides

So ya wanna go Deep? Take a look at these observing guides from FaintFuzzies.com; the Abell Planetary Observer’s Guide, and the Hickson Group Observer’s Guide.

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