First outing with our C11 - a bit long

[MinnDon]

Well, meeting a bunch of folks Saturday night at CGO got our juices flowing, so we ventured out last night (Sun) to a local park and braved the temps to get a peak at Mars and Saturn. Saturn was clear and ultra bright through the 40mm eyepiece, if not very big. It looked good enough for Anne to exclaim in a high pitch, "Oh, it's sooooo cute!" After we gazed at it for a few minutes I could see 3 small objects off to one side of it and a short distance outside the rings. Could those have been moons? I guess a second look on another night will test that theory if they have changed positions?

Aside from the low temps, which caused our session to be cut short (hard to have fun with numb hands), we also ran into a couple of other technical difficulties:

1. The LCD on the handset for the scope got really sluggish in the cold and the scrolling info on it was unreadable. Don't know what to do about that,... maybe one of those chemical handwarmers rubber banded to the back of it?

2. We (newbies) didn't print star charts before we went out as we figured we could use "The Sky" software (came free with the scope) on our laptop for orientation. Well, the battery on the laptop lasted only a couple minutes, and even after we hooked it up to a better power source, the LCD screen got wonky from the cold, like the LCD on the handset.

3. This snag gave me a bit more concern that the two mentioned above. When the scope slewed around, one of the motors made some whining noise that I didn't hear during dry runs indoors. I figured this was due to the cold, but wondered if some lube needed replenishment, or maybe some additive added for cold temps. Maybe a call to Celestron is in order? Anyone else experience this? Is it normal, or should I be concerned? I did check the balance and adjusted weight positions before we started, so I don't think it was just fighting through bad balancing,... but then again, I am a green-horn.

4. I guess one needs a dew cover even in the winter. I had put the scope out in the car about an hour before we left (for a cooling off period), but just before we quit observing we noticed frost forming all over the shell of the scope and the finder scope. Interesting, as it seemed too cold for much humidity to be in the air, but temps must have been dropping while we were out there (between 7:30 and 9:30).

5. Also learned that picking your own alignment stars is the best way to go. The scope's "Auto align" seemed to want to pick stars that weren't all that bright, and were also pretty close to other stars of similar magnitude. I spent more than an hour struggling with this problem (and freezing my arse off kneeling on icy packed snow while I tried to line things up and figure out which star it was trying to find).

6. I also learned that I have to tell Anne not to breath so hard when it's that cold out, or exclaim things like "it's soooo cute", while she's got her eye up the eye piece. When I went back to look again, her breath had frosted over the eye piece, which made me rub my eye for a second thinking I had gotten something in it.

All in all, it went well and we made a few baby steps on the learning curve. We also realized we're going to want some accessories in the near term. It would have been nice to be able to knock down the light a bit with a filter for Saturn; it was pretty bright and pretty much washed out. Also getting an itch for a barlow, and some other eye pieces. But, baby steps, right?

Thanks for reading this, and TIA for any feedback on the whining motor thing, or any other words of wisdom from the generous souls out there.

"Seeing" is believing,

Don

[rcobian]

Hello,
It sounds like you had a great time. I'm jealous because I didn't get the chance to go out last night. (Read: I was too lazy to go out last night.) I don't have a powered telescope, so I can't give you alot of advise there. However, I have read on other forums that the chem hand warmers work well on the back of the LCD handsets. I just discovered those hand warmers myself a couple of months ago, although I'm sure they have been around for quite a while. I've found that sticking them in your gloves and boots can make all the difference in winter observing. They actually kept me quite comfortable during an observing session last Dec despite sub-zero windchills.

I've had my telescope frost up on me a couple of times. To be honest I don't worry about it. I just tip my telescope horizontally when I bring it into the house so that the water doesn't pool on the objectives. I also leave it open to help it dry out faster. Others may be more careful about this than I am.

As for foggy eyepieces, I have that problem also. I've found that if you hold the eyepiece in your pocket the heat from your hand will de-fog it pretty quickly. Just be careful not to touch the lense.

Those stars adjacent to Saturn were most likely moons. Your planetarium software should be able to tell you which ones. Otherwise Sky and Telescope has a freeware program on their website to help you identify them.
http://skyandtelescope.com/observing/article_1193_1.asp

Happy Observing!

[Jon Hickman]

Don & Anne:

Congratulations!

A couple of things. Yes, LCD's cloud up a bit in cold weather. LED's tend to dim.

It is likely that you were seeing 3 moons. For both Saturn and Jupiter, the larger moons appear as bright pinpoints of light through small telescopes. Smaller than stars and very bright.

Dew heaters are available for both the front correcting plate on your scope, and for eye pieces. The former comes in very handy, the later I find to be more of a pain than help. The pocket trick mentioned above tends to work well, but remember to cap the ep before dropping it in your pocket!

Glad you had a good "first light" experience, and even more glad you shared it with us!

[Chris White]

Well, meeting a bunch of folks Saturday night at CGO got our juices flowing, so we ventured out last night (Sun) to a local park and braved the temps to get a peak at Mars and Saturn. Saturn was clear and ultra bright through the 40mm eyepiece, if not very big. It looked good enough for Anne to exclaim in a high pitch, "Oh, it's sooooo cute!" After we gazed at it for a few minutes I could see 3 small objects off to one side of it and a short distance outside the rings. Could those have been moons? I guess a second look on another night will test that theory if they have changed positions?

Saturn is awesome, I have to use a fairly small eyepiece to make it viewable and I am generally using only a 5" so it limits my magnification. It's fairly small at 9mm, which is kinda high mag for my 5" but, I would prefer to use a barlow with a larger eyepiece. If I see ya don't hesitate to ask if you can try one out or a higher mag eyepiece. Can't comment on the moons much I think they are up to 22 or so with I believe 5 close decent sized moons kind of parallel and very close with the rings I believe and a monster titan which is a further out which should be certainly be visible if it was not behind the planet. Not an expert on moons of Saturn have not done much viewing but, yeah more than likely they were moons esp if they were just outside the ring.

If anyone has a good program that can calculate the exact position of the moons of Saturn and Jupiter I would love to hear it(preferably with a way to reverse it and turn it to show how it's going to look in the eyepiece, or even better a plug-on for circ du ciel, My otwell calendar for 2006 has nice little graps for Saturns moons on page 55.

Aside from the low temps, which caused our session to be cut short (hard to have fun with numb hands), we also ran into a couple of other technical difficulties:

1. The LCD on the handset for the scope got really sluggish in the cold and the scrolling info on it was unreadable. Don't know what to do about that,... maybe one of those chemical handwarmers rubber banded to the back of it?

I have an LED on my meade which also does that, I can speed up the speed and slow it down but, the pixel's appear to just not update very quickly. I have everything powered from an 12volt 7amp gell cell so it's not a power issue. It only happens in cold weather. For LCD, yes, they get cold and you want to try not to let them freeze, and I have seen them also get slugish. I wonder if your mount and controller are getting enough power, your not using a battery pack are you? A couple hand warmers sound like a really great idea. Batteries go quick when it's cold. I have actually been considering a coleman tent warmer (I had one but, can't find it anymore) to position away from the scope but, directed at my battery, controller, and myself (although if you saw me at the beginners sig I had like 90 layers on and could have stayed out all night, but, even with my pac boots my toes still get cold after about 6 hours but, I can toss in a couple hand warmers otherwise I am perfectly comfy and kind of like it but, it's funner with more people which is why I try and hit star parties as much as I can, and the fact they are located at dark sky sites). I used to go up to the North Entrance of Sand Dunes state forest with is just below a huge WMA but, it got pretty boaring and it's still an hour drive so I guess I would rather go to Onan or Cherry Grove for significantly darker sky's than Bloomington. The tips of my fingers get cold as well, I wear the glove/mitten things where the mitten part folds back as needed to expose my fingers so I flip them back and forth extensively, you can find them most anyplace nowadays and they work great, I have several different pairs for different conditions;

www.campmor.com

it's item 41199, I have a polartec version that are also windproof, they have all different kinds but, these are the only things I wear nowadays.

2. We (newbies) didn't print star charts before we went out as we figured we could use "The Sky" software (came free with the scope) on our laptop for orientation. Well, the battery on the laptop lasted only a couple minutes, and even after we hooked it up to a better power source, the LCD screen got wonky from the cold, like the LCD on the handset. Is it really an LCD or an LED?

I don't let my LCD on my laptop get cold, I fire it up right away and keep it going, if it freezes your better off letting it warm up for at least an hour before turning it on. I can cause issues. I do often use a laptop but, I keep it warm until I power it up and keep it running and it generates a fair amount of heat (I will fire up bonic to keep the CPU at 100% hoping the head will somehow radiate to the LCD but, might be total nonsense). But, I have no problems with my laptop if I fire it up right away and keep it running (not to say this is bad). Batteries will not last long in the cold, I would plan on using AC power or a really big gell cell with a DC power cord.

I would highly recommend a really nice planisphere, like firefly, it's huge check it out on amazon, I will only take my laptop out if I am imaging and again I try and keep it as warm as possible.

3. This snag gave me a bit more concern that the two mentioned above. When the scope slewed around, one of the motors made some whining noise that I didn't hear during dry runs indoors. I figured this was due to the cold, but wondered if some lube needed replenishment, or maybe some additive added for cold temps. Maybe a call to Celestron is in order? Anyone else experience this? Is it normal, or should I be concerned? I did check the balance and adjusted weight positions before we started, so I don't think it was just fighting through bad balancing,... but then again, I am a green-horn.

I am not familier with your scope but, if it was not on AC power I would suspect that first, that it may have had difficulties getting enough juice. Check the clutch to make sure it's tightened, you said you balanced it. Otherwise I have had drive slipage bun I have a really cheap (as in bottom of the line) so I would not want to compare the two. I would not expect a new scope to have an issue like that, certainly call celestron and ask them for advice.

4. I guess one needs a dew cover even in the winter. I had put the scope out in the car about an hour before we left (for a cooling off period), but just before we quit observing we noticed frost forming all over the shell of the scope and the finder scope. Interesting, as it seemed too cold for much humidity to be in the air, but temps must have been dropping while we were out there (between 7:30 and 9:30).

Yes, true lots less water in the winter but, if it's 25 degrees out and the dewpoint is 24 degrees it's pretty similar to summer at 75 degrees with a dewpoint of 72, we seem to be dryer right now but, as the sun goes down the temps start falling but, the moisture does not really have anywhere to go until they meet and you get clouds and snow. Yeah I get frost as well.

5. Also learned that picking your own alignment stars is the best way to go. The scope's "Auto align" seemed to want to pick stars that weren't all that bright, and were also pretty close to other stars of similar magnitude. I spent more than an hour struggling with this problem (and freezing my arse off kneeling on icy packed snow while I tried to line things up and figure out which star it was trying to find).

Took me a long time to figure out how to do that. A zero mag finder (telrad red-dot) is really nice as well. You must have pretty dark sky's because I can only see a limited amount of stars at night. If you do your initial setup (home position but, again I don't know your scope I assume it's an 11"SCT on alt-az) the first star should be close (also make sure your GPS location is accurate and time is accurate I really had problems up until I did that). Get the really nice huge planisphere (of some type) (I will take a planisphere along with maybe night's event's from calsky, I don't find the printed star charts very usefull unless they are very narrow field versus the whole sky for finding objects by sight rather than goto).
Then I eventually found out if it does end up pointing between two stars I can't identify I can just hit the arrow key and it will pick another star I would imagine you have the same capabillity on your controller.

6. I also learned that I have to tell Anne not to breath so hard when it's that cold out, or exclaim things like "it's soooo cute", while she's got her eye up the eye piece. When I went back to look again, her breath had frosted over the eye piece, which made me rub my eye for a second thinking I had gotten something in it.

I still do that at least once a night in the course of the night by mistake.

All in all, it went well and we made a few baby steps on the learning curve. We also realized we're going to want some accessories in the near term. It would have been nice to be able to knock down the light a bit with a filter for Saturn; it was pretty bright and pretty much washed out. Also getting an itch for a barlow, and some other eye pieces. But, baby steps, right?

Thanks for reading this, and TIA for any feedback on the whining motor thing, or any other words of wisdom from the generous souls out there.

"Seeing" is believing,

Don

I am fairly new to this so some of my answers may be entirely wrong or inappropriate so take them with a grain of salt, I am sure others will respond and hope the correct my inaccuracies and would love to hear other suggestions as well.

[MinnDon]

Thanks for the advice, and sympathy, guys. Called Celestron about the motor noise and the tech there seemed confident that nothing was wrong (since the thing is brand new, and actually tracked pretty well - 15 minutes with Saturn in the middle of the FOV). He just said the lube gets stiff, like with anything else in these parts and the gears might get noisy in this kind of cold (like lots of the moving parts in my old '92 Suburban!). It was actually only noisy when slewing, but quiet while tracking.

Cheers,

Don

[Chris White]

Thanks for the advice, and sympathy, guys. Called Celestron about the motor noise and the tech there seemed confident that nothing was wrong (since the thing is brand new, and actually tracked pretty well - 15 minutes with Saturn in the middle of the FOV). He just said the lube gets stiff, like with anything else in these parts and the gears might get noisy in this kind of cold (like lots of the moving parts in my old '92 Suburban!). It was actually only noisy when slewing, but quiet while tracking.

Cheers,

Don

Oh, I thought it was making noise but, not moving, I misunderstood.

[Jon Hickman]

Oh, yeah, forgot to mention about the noise issue.. Doh!!! Most of the consumer oriented telescope vendors tend to use.... um, er, less than perfect/desirable/costly lubricants from the factory.

Synta (who now owns Celestron) and Guan Sheng (the other major player in the "Chinese Scope Wars") are famous for their very thick grease on their refractors especially. Some are so thick that even during the summer you have to remove the focuser, strip it and relube to get anything resembling "smooth" movements.

While Celestron and Meade tend to do better, on average, than some of the very low-priced folks, our winters and their factory grease are not the best of friends. While it is not cause for concern as in: "Wow, this is gonna wreck my scope!", it tends to get thicker with each passing year rather than looser. After several years it can, in some cases, start to impede normal movement of the mount.

It is nothing to worry about for now, but let's talk again in about 2 yeas....