Posts Made By: Gary Davis

If you want this type of information about the moons of jupiter and saturn and all the phases that occur, get the program called Planets. It is a visual depiction of all the events that take place. You can see them years in advance and know exactly when and what time they will occur. The program is free but better than most. You may find The Planets at www.cpac.org.uk. I use it to set up my nights viewing. Learning curve is in the area of easy but effective. Be sure to enter the proper information so that its accurate for your area.

On the night of jan-8-03 beginning at 17:19 PST Ganymede began a transit and left the limb of jupiter at 20:38 PST. This was followed at 18:29 PST by a transit of Io which ended at 20:21 PST. The GRS was also just beginning at 18:29 PST. An occultation also took place on this night, Io And Ganymede. Several hours before and several hours after there were no other Galilean activities. The total event ended at 21:56 PST.

I have the Orion XT4.5, XT6, XT8, and the XT10. The difference in image quality between the two is noticable. The XT10 resolves almost all the globular clusters but the XT8 cannot. I can set up the XT8 in one trip but not the XT10, its heavy. On planets the XT8 is almost the same as the XT10 and in some cases, its better. May be due to focal length. All in all, the entire XT line is great for the price. Mine all have DSC's, 9X50 finders, and Rigel finders. One thing about the XT10 is it fogs up way before the other scopes. I cut a piece of foam insulation that fits over the primary mirror cell "outside". Once the scope has cooled I place this over it and prevents fogging the remainder of the night. Hope this helps. Good luck.

Thats correct, they are reversed. We need to know which encoder you are working with so the we can get it right the first time. Anyway, if one of them is intact, the other is the exact opposite. Black, skip, red, green, yellow. One of your encoders runs with a negative sign in the setup routine.

Ryan,

Try this little program at www.cpac.org.uk its called planets. Its great, you can plan viewing sessions for years in advance with it.

Hugo,

You could get the Orion XT-6 right here on AM or from one of the other AM sponsers. It does very well on the closer planets such as Jupiter and Saturn. The DS2114 is only 4.5 inches and not always of top quality. The 70ETX is just to small, period. The 5.2 Orion sounds much better than any of the others. Of course I do not have enough other information from your post to be of any real help other than to recommend the 6 inch F/8 Orion scope because I have one and its a nice scope for the money. At least if you don't like our hobby you will not have broken the bank and will have a good scope to boot. Uranus will be a very small disk with little or no detail. It takes a large scope of 10 inches or more to reveal very much about Uranus and Neptune.

Ivan,

You might try observing with both eyes open if you currently cover or close one or the other. When the brightness in both eyes becomes the same the floaters seem to dis-appear. Its hard to get used to at first and you may well miss some detail but it becomes natural after awhile. Another thing is to try a different image size to obtain a darker image or lighter image, use whatever suits your needs. For me the floaters are the worse at about 230X up to around 260X and horrible at 350X "follow me all over the image". You have to find the magnifications that reduce or eliminate the interferance that allows you to see them. If you can, use a zoom eyepiece to find the image sizes that you can use "and not use". It will be far better than hanging upside down to see !! A long focal length scope is likely not your best friend . I suspect you need fairly bright images and not large images, like you see right now.
I can see where binoviewers could help with this condition but have never tried them, sometime in the future I will.
good luck to you and all who suffer from the FLOATERS.

I have both, the Orion XT8 and a Discovery DHQ 8 inch. In comparing side by side I can say the following. The Discovery is more finicky than the Orion. The image quality is so close to the same that it is impossible for me to say one is better than the other. On some nights the Orion wins, on other nights the Discovery wins, on some nights there the same. One thing I do notice is the Discovery has a darker image. Perhaps becuse of its F/7 ratio verses the Orions F/6. I do think the Orion is a better built instrument and I really like the springs for tensioning. You can place some pretty heavy stuff up front without upsetting its balance. The Discovery takes a nose dive without counter weights. Both are large cumbersome scopes. As for beauty, i think the Orion wins hands down. Good luck.

Geez, you sound pissed, Paul. I have a feeling that you can recover from your listing loss. Ask Herb !! I should not say this but you should already know "do not count your chickens before they hatch". I think Its the real reason behind what you are saying. As a business person you already know that people sometimes change their minds, even at the last minute !! And they have a perfect right to do so. It does not mean I don't understand your position. You are politicly right but adding salt to your wound will only stress you and get nothing in return. I really hope you can resell it.

My XT 4.5 resolves 5 stars. My XT-8 resolves 6 stars. Look closely, a 14 inch should be able to see at least 6.