In June 2010 I received a marvellous present for an
important birthday, a Meade ETX-125 telescope. I had an interest in astronomy
decades ago in my youth partly inspired by early ‘Sky at Night’ programmes
seen at my uncle and aunt’s home late on
Sunday nights but my interest lapsed over the intervening years. What a great opportunity to rekindle my interest,
I thought!
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| Paul's Meade ETX-125 telescope |
Well, two years on I can report on a great deal of frustration, setbacks but eventual success
until the last few weeks of inclement weather. Yes, of all the places to start
this hobby, I chose the west of Scotland with its rain and lack of summer
darkness!
A few months after
getting the telescope, once we had a few clear dark nights, we enjoyed
wonderful views of the moon, Jupiter and Saturn with its renowned rings. But what I couldn’t do was to set up the telescope so that I
could use the handset with its ‘Goto’
facility which enables you to select the object that you wish to view and get
the telescope to point to it and then track it across the sky. The latter is
very important since the telescope came with just one lens yielding 73 times
magnification which results in objects moving quickly out of view because of
the earth’s rotation unless the telescope is set up (aligned) correctly.
I trawled the internet for the solution and tried all manner
of ideas. I spent 15 minutes at the start of each observation session trying to
get the base and telescope horizontal with a spirit level and trying to point
the telescope at precisely due north but to no avail. The solution turned out
to be to manually set the latitude and longitude of Strathyre rather than use
the default setting of Edinburgh. Most of the Meade telescopes are sold to the
US market and if you’re located in the US then you can enter the zip code which
pinpoints where you’re located reasonably accurately but in Europe the simple
set up process simply asks you to specify the nearest city.
Having got over this hurdle, I was eagerly looking forward
to an evening’s observation one Thursday night in April 2011 when the telescope began to misbehave badly
and in an entirely unpredictable manner. We arranged a mad dash down to the
shop in Stockport where the telescope had been purchased, left it for repair
and spent a couple of nights with
friends in Burnley before returning home. A few days later I received a
telephone call:
‘We’ve hooked the telescope up to our own power supply and
it works fine.’
‘Were you using rechargeable batteries?’ ‘Yes.’
‘Did you mix two different types?’ ‘I’ll just go and have a
look – yes and two different voltages.’
‘That’s your problem then’.
The telescope was then posted back to me and during the
glorious weather of the 2nd half of April 2011 and early May I
enjoyed some fine evenings’ observations.
Autumn 2011 and I managed to snap a battery contact. This
led me to find an interim solution involving a bent paper clip. This was
courtesy of a wonderful character called ‘Doug Dickens’ with a fascinating life
story which you can read here http://imhdd2.ms11.net/1932/1932_01.html
. His early years were reminiscent of Steinbeck’s novels. The permanent solution was a ‘Power Tank’
which is basically a highly packaged (and priced!) rechargeable 12 volt
battery. But if I hadn’t broken the battery contact, then I’d never stumbled
across Doug with whom I’ve exchanged a few emails.
Next problem was that I messed up the pre-loaded night sky
tours with which the telescope came. This turned out not to be my fault but an
incompatibility between the software used to maintain the telescope and the
firmware in the handset. The solution was eventually provided by a guy in
Melbourne who had developed some very clever software of his own designed for
people doing photography and needing very accurate tracking for long exposures.
He’d extended the software to do other things including maintaining these
tours. It was worse than I’ve indicated because I couldn’t get his software to
work either but sent him all the details of my set up and location and got a
reply within 24 hours identifying the problem in his software and an easy and
effective work-around.
This winter I’ve had
great fun finding my way around the night sky and observing open clusters and
nebulae in particular. The cold was yet another problem with ice on the
telescope on more than one occasion and a frozen sloping garden making life
even more interesting. I started wearing apparel that I’d last used in anger
during my many treks in the Himalayas in the 1990s in a previous life. I was tempted to carry a hip
flask with a warming single malt but alcohol and a sophisticated telescope
together with icy conditions a good mix do not make!
So that brings us up
to date with me hoping for some clear skies before the light summer nights
intervene. Given the infrequency of clear night skies here I’m not promoting
astronomy weekends or similar but I am very happy to set up the telescope for
interested guests when conditions permit especially if a late breakfast is
acceptable!
LETI: Partners Paul Holt and Mal Dingle run Rosebank House, a pet friendly bed and breakfast in Strathyre. Their accommodation in Perthshire and The Trossachs is popular with British and European holiday makers whether they wish a relaxing break, a stopping point at the gateway to the Highlands or an ideal base for walking, biking and other outdoor activities near Scottish lochs and mountains.
