After getting a new Losmandy bar last week for the Meade 10" f/10 I managed to remove the optical tube assembly of the Meade from its old fork mount and transfer it to the CGE mount.
The CGE has been interesting to use. I'm learning how to use the Nexstar controller and align the scope without having to sync the starting position (which fails due to some weird switch wiring error from the previous owner's work on the RA and Dec cables). When it works it is pretty convenient, though sometimes it seems to come up with a bad global pointing solution from the two star plus a few extra star alignment and clearing it out requires starting over or just bypassing it using another way to goto, which I found last night, of using "precision goto" which uses a reference star near the object you are looking for to basically star hop to the object. I ordered a computer cable and may try running the mount from the laptop next week to see if that gives me more options. I purchased a tele-compressor for the Meade and I think I like it for visual use. It is nice to have the wider field of view.
Last night was spent looking at M13, M3, M5, M4, M57, M92, M27, Jupiter, and Saturn with the f/6.3 focal length from the tele-compresssor. Nice to be able to see them from town. The trees messed with the alignment star choice though and while at first I got an ok alignment (~0.5 deg off) a later attempt to improve the alignment just made it worse. If I move the telescope to the observatory I'll have a much better horizon to work with.
The CGE has been interesting to use. I'm learning how to use the Nexstar controller and align the scope without having to sync the starting position (which fails due to some weird switch wiring error from the previous owner's work on the RA and Dec cables). When it works it is pretty convenient, though sometimes it seems to come up with a bad global pointing solution from the two star plus a few extra star alignment and clearing it out requires starting over or just bypassing it using another way to goto, which I found last night, of using "precision goto" which uses a reference star near the object you are looking for to basically star hop to the object. I ordered a computer cable and may try running the mount from the laptop next week to see if that gives me more options. I purchased a tele-compressor for the Meade and I think I like it for visual use. It is nice to have the wider field of view.
Last night was spent looking at M13, M3, M5, M4, M57, M92, M27, Jupiter, and Saturn with the f/6.3 focal length from the tele-compresssor. Nice to be able to see them from town. The trees messed with the alignment star choice though and while at first I got an ok alignment (~0.5 deg off) a later attempt to improve the alignment just made it worse. If I move the telescope to the observatory I'll have a much better horizon to work with.
