Telescope Buying Guide For Campers (Part 7)

Telescope
Celestron SkySync GPS

GPS for Your Telescope?

Many years ago, back before I had a cell phone with a GPS chip, I bought a dedicated GPS unit for my telescope. Even though I can use my cell phone to enter the time, latitude and longitude into the hand controller of my scope, I continue to use the Celestron GPS unit only with this particular mount and only when I am visually observing.

When I am taking pictures the mount is connected to a computer and it is easier to just enter the coordinates into the computer. I have two other telescope mounts that I only use for taking pictures. I don’t use a GPS unit with them either. In this post I’ll discuss how this Celestron SkySync GPS doohickey works.

So the bottom line is you don’t need one. For somethings it is a “nice to have” item. For what it costs there is probably some other piece of equipment that would provide more value for the money, such as an eyepiece, a filter or a Bahtinov Focusing Mask, such as the one I bought for my Celestron 8″ telescope.

Continue reading Telescope Buying Guide For Campers (Part 7) →

Seventy

Hiking,

Some Thoughts on Aging and Petroglyphs

Last Sunday I turned 70 years old.

My son, Joe, called the day before and suggested we go for a hike together, which was an excellent idea. No better way to celebrate any milestone of holiday than going for a walk out into the desert.

Joyce’s ankle is healing. Although she can’t walk on it, she has a scooter and a wheeled walker enabling her to get around without any assistance. So no problem for me to take off from home for a day. Continue reading Seventy →

Telescope Buying Guide For Campers (Part 6)

Telescope
A “red-dot” finder scope is mounted on the top of the telescope towards the rear.

Finder Scopes

The narrower  the field of view, the less area you can view.With a narrow field of view (FOV) it can be difficult to locate deep sky objects in the night sky.

To overcome this, a finder scope is often mounted on the telescope to make it easier to locate objects. A finder scope has  a field of view much wider than a telescope. Finder scopes make it easier to locate objects, and are useful when aligning the scope to the night sky and are especially useful with computerized “go-to” telescopes.

What follows is a brief explanation of finder scopes and what I use. Continue reading Telescope Buying Guide For Campers (Part 6) →