Autostar 494 assistance

Mickeydim468 · Guest

There are so many questions to ask as a newbie to this great hobby of amature astronomy. I will try to keep this short, but I need help!

A few years back I bought my oldest son a Bushnell Voyager scope. At the time we were such newbies that we didn't know that there was a larger aperature cap than the 2 inch one in the center. We saw the moon and a few stars but were totally un-impressed. We put the scope up and it has gathered dust ever since. A month or so ago I saw an article on my Yahoo homepage titles Celestial Summit! This article sparked a new interest in the heavens. So, I dug out the old Bushnell. I couldn't find all of the eyepieces. I only found part of the 3mm eyepiece that came with it. The part that slides down into the focusing assembly was missing. I got out the phone book and started calling around locally to see if I could go and buy a new eyepiece for that night's special event. I could not find anyone within 100 miles to go pick up a new eyepiece. So, I quickly used my lathe and cut down a piece of PVC pipe to accommodate my lack of having a collar on the 3mm. Understanding that the 3mm eyepiece would be a very high amount of magnification with having a scope with a 900mm focal point ,I knew I would have to do something else to view this event properly. So, I cannibalized my binoculars and lathed another piece of PVC pipe for this one too. Long story short I accidentally figured out that the other lens cap comes off and WOW what a difference. My wife and I drove to a dark field near town and we sat up camp for the next few hours all the while enjoying this once in a lifetime phenomenon at 4am. This really re-kindled the spark of astronomy in me and my wife as well.

A few weeks later I received a phone call at work. It was my wife. She works at WalMart. She said the photo department received their shipment of Christmas telescopes. So, after work I went down and found that they had the Meade DS-2114 4.5" 1000mm scope with the GoTo #494 mount for 298.00. I thought it was a good deal so I bought it. That night I set it up and everything was fine. The views were less than stunning however. I had a better view with the old bushnell. So I did some research and found an a few hundred articles on collimation. I found that the scope was way out of collimation so I used the directions I found and have this problem resolved after 2- 5 hour sessions of trying. Now the seeing is great. This leads me to where my problem lies.

Before doing my collimation 2 things happened:
1) the AutoStar was going directly to whatever I put into the controller. At least very close and required very little adjustment.
2) My 4 year old daughter turned the scope 90 degrees on it's axis to the left with the scope turned of a nd this was done manually and quickly.

Now, itis hard to do the initial align using the easy option, and it does not GoTo or track objects properly. I find I am having to slew the scope a lot just to find what I am looking for. Not only in the left/right direction but also in the up.down direction as well. Could there be a factory calibration theat got messed up when I collimated the scope? Also do you know the proper settings for the other settings under telescope in the utilities menu? I have used the "Reset" and "Train Telescope" options as well as calibrate motor. None of these things seemed to help.
Please help!

Thank you in advance for your responses!

Sincerely,

Mike Dorsey
Vacaville Ca.

Jne_K · Site Admin Joined: 24 Sep 2003 Posts: 5173

Hi

Really don't have the resources to troubleshoot on the elctronics or computer on your Meade, but I would suggest you start over, completely, with an initial alignment, same as if the telescope was new and it was your first night out. Also, as a general guideline, do not move s cope manually when the computer is on. Use the hand co0ntrol.

You may also wish to visit with Meade at 1-800-626-3233
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