- In performing the 2-star alignment, its only necessary to know exactly where one star is. Follow the keyboard prompts till you come to choosing the second star. When you know which star is going to be your second star, find the stars name and press enter. Then, instead of centering the second star in the eyepiece, just hit the "GOTO" button and the telescope will slew to that star as best it knows. If your last alignment was done in the same general area, the star will probably at least be viewable in the finder. This helps if you don't know exactly which star is the one in Orion or Gemini as an example, just give it your best shot and press "goto" instead of centering. This works great! Its not listed in the manual.
If you set up level and pointing south, it gets even easier. All you really need is the name of a star that is up. Power up. Press the STAR key. Press ENTER twice and select the star name. Press GOTO. The scope will slew near to where that star is. It is most likely the brightest in the area. How close it comes depends on the accuracy of the clock, Lat & Long, level and pointing south. Once you have the star centered you can perform the above process.
- When you have hit the "goto" command and the telescope is slewing, you can stop the slew by just hitting the "goto" button again. It will stop the slewing of the scope. To resume slewing, just hit "goto" again and the slew will continue to its destination. This is a nice feature if you have a fear of maybe the eyepiece or your camera hitting the fork or bump into another part of the scope. Its nice to know how to stop a slewing scope. This is not in the manual either.
- Take a comfortable chair with you. Even a bar stool is probably ok as long as you can sit at the eyepiece and view. An adjustable one is better. Sometimes, objects or details will become much more apparent once you have viewed through the eyepiece for a few minutes. This is also great on tired feet or backs as the night lingers on.
Adjustable is very important. A comfortable height can mean the difference between relaxed viewing and back strain. A few inches can make a difference.
- Make yourself a Rob Roy Pizza pan. This is one of the greatest simplest ideas ever. Buy your self a 16" pizza pan for 10 bucks or so and cut out an offset hole in it to slide over your tripod. Place your telescope on the tripod as usual and you now have a very nice tray to hold a eyepiece, filter, flashlight, a sandwich, twinky, cigar or what every you have that you need to sit down for a minute as you make adjustments. But most of all, this is a terrific place to hang your key pad anywhere around your telescope, the full 360 degrees around the tripod. You will never leave home without this! I guarantee this! Ask the MAPUG group for more details on this Pizza pan idea.
- Get the Rob Roy Joystick for your keypad. Its the most natural looking option you could get for your keypad and like all joysticks, it will give joystick control over your telescope. This will also work on LX-50's also. This along with the pizza pan are the two items that any LX-200 owner should always have. This is another one of those "don't leave home without it" items.
- Get an extended Keypad coiled cord. I bought a 20 foot black coiled telephone cord at Radio shack for about 5 or 6 dollars. It has the correct plugs to plug right into your keypad and control panel. You can test it by removing the coiled cord on your telephone and trying out this one. This gives lots more mobility for you without giving up the keypad. The cord hangs about a foot from the ground so things don't get tangled into a mess.
Make sure you get the right kind of phone chord. There are two kinds. One works, and one can be disastrous. I'm not sure whether the receiver type or the phone to wall type is correct.
- A JMI Motofucus NGF-S focuser. This is a $250.00 item so I included it last. This is in my opinion the only way to get rid of image shift focusing. With out this focuser, very high power viewing is very difficult to focus. This unit is well made and fits the telescope perfectly. Its expensive, but then, so was the telescope.
Don't forget Bill Arnett's Jiffy Focuser. See his web page: http://www.seds.org/billa/
- Park your scope:
If you'd like to leave your scope running continuously to keep alignment (in an observatory or at a long starparty) you should "park" it so the tracking action does not choke the scope/wires during the day.
You can safely switch your scope into "land" mode, and then switch it back to your chosen astronomical mode later -- the scope will maintain its alignment even if you slew it with the NSEW keys in the meantime. And of course, "parking" the scope like this minimizes the power consumption since the alt/az motors are off.
Some "parking" notes:
I've found that when I first go into land mode, the motors go quiet and the ammeter goes level as expected. However, if the NSEW keys are used to move about, I'll sometimes reach an "edge" state where one or both motors are "buzzing" but going nowhere. Simply tapping the directional keys in the reverse (or sometimes even same) direction will skip into the "quiet zone" again.
Better visual images on planets:
"Park" your scope when you are using it to look at planets and lunar features. Sure you'll have to keep recentering manually, but you won't have the vibrating of the alt/az motors fouling your view.
Alt/Az power-down parking:
* Switch your scope to "land" mode
* Slew to alt/az 90/0 (use the mode key to get coordinate display and press GOTO to enter coordinates)
* Power down.
...
* Power up the scope will expect to be at 90/0 (which it is if you haven't moved it during the powerdown)
* Switch back to alt/az mode.
GOTO will be fairly accurate if you were truly level to start with.
If you want refraction correction, you'll have to do an alignment,
but at least you can easily GOTO the first star.
- Keep the Tripod from Rusting
Spray a little WD-40 on the tripod legs. Wipe it down real good. This will minimize or eliminate rust from forming. If you don't like using WD-40...use a good quality car wax. If rust has already formed and can't be "wiped-away" with the WD-40, simply rub the spots with a piece of crumpled-up aluminum foil. Follow-up with WD-40 or wax.
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