GREETINGS!
3 YEARS ago I acquired a used Avalon M-Zero in perfect condition and equipped myself with a new C8 OTA etc etc. All good...
But I have not done *one thing* with it...I have 2 hurdles I need to overcome to get back into my beloved hobby (I lost last year..)
The gentlemen I bought it from came over and we set it up (during the day, looking at the sun); we controlled it with my iPhone using one of the astronomy apps.
All good...but I want to be able to input right ascension (R.A.) and declination (dec) coordinates.
I really, really, REALLY want to do this...and it must be possible, ain't it?
(I keep saying: if I wanted a 'goto mount', I would've just bought a NexStar 4 :-))
I started out in 1971 (I'm a dinosaur) in my high-school observatory using a donated hand-built (Sputnik US astronaut craze in the late 1960s/1960s) 30cm Newtonian...equipped with setting circles... Our tremendous earth-science teacher who was in charge of the observatory taught us celestial mechanics = we set the R.A. on a couple of bright stars, then hunted DSOs by inputing the dec & RA coordinates (from an Epoch 1950.0 Skalnate-Pleso Antonin Becvar sky atlas 😎💪) When I got a used 1990s C8 Ultimata back in 2010, I continued Wil Tirion's gorgeous Cambridge Sky Atlas.
I was busy trying to improve/speed up polar alignment, but my back was protesting the weight of the mount.
A friend mentioned the Avalon, I found one for sale (literally just down the street), and here I am.
But I haven't ever used the thing because I have 2 problems to solve:
1. rapid & accurate polar alignment of the Avalon. I have been thinking about the QHY Polemaster or the ioptron ipolar (the Avalon has a polar axis
adapter for one of them, I think the Polemaster but I forget. Minor detail...)
BUT, the gentlemen who sold me the mount has also talked about an older 'Raspberry'...and that there was a new one
('ZWO ASIAIR'...?) which can be used for both polar alignment and auto-guiding (I know what auto-guiding is but one step at a time...).
2. as above: I REALLY want to be able to input R.A. & dec coordinates into the mount (and NOT use a PHONE to control it...grrrrr....)
(BTW I have a MacBook Pro (which has Intel processors = easy running of Windows emulator) to control any of this stuff with...)
So: I guess some combination of these toys will make polar alignment easy & pretty close to perfect...and allow me to go to autoguiding later...
but can anyone help me understand how to make it possible to input RA & dec into the Avalon?
PLEASE forgive me for all of these stupid questions...........
Many thanks in advance!