LX90 LNT - my first thoughts

[Rohan]

Well 2 weeks on and 3 viewing nights under the arm thought i might make a quick post about my thoughts on the LX90.

In terms of viewing last night was supurb, clear skys, no wind at all, light pollution a problem but what can ya do.

Anyway to be honest i'm not very happy with my scope. So far it hasn't impressed me much. My main concern has been the GOTO. The first night it was fine, second night it stuffed up a lot and i had to realign it twice before getting feed up. Last night it took 5 attempts to get a succesful alignment. I checked everything, date, time, location, comfirmed the stars on my computer and it still failed. When it slewed to the alignment stars it wasn't even close to them, often 45+ degrees off. The first night it stopped right on them.

So obviously when i did get it succesfully aligned went for a spin around the universe. Saturn, not in eyepiece, had to aling with the finder. Jupitier, just in the eye peice but still abit dodgy. Then went off hunting galaxies, nebs and so on. Everytime what ever it slewed to looked nothnig like what i was expected. Eventually i just wizzed around looking for something interesting. Came across a bright yellow star and was wondering what it was, used the identify option and autostar came up with the jewal box. Funnily enuf i was no where near the jewal box. Checked the dec and RA locks and they were firm on and the scope had not moved at all.

Told it to GOTO Omega C. and was off again, finally tried Jupiter so i could defianatly check it was off. Got the rough location but still didn't make my finderscope. By then i had had enuf so packed up and went inside.

Unfortunatly the setup of my house & backyard prevent me from been able to focus on anything far away (land objects) so i havn't had a chance to train the drives. Anyone think that will help. I guess i have taken the wrong approach to astronomy by getting a GOTO, if the scope points at something i don't always know if its miles off or i just can't see anything because a) scope to small or b) city lights.

Or maybe i just expected way to much for an 8". So far i'm worried that i may have just spent $3500 on a large paper weight. Will try get out to a dark site in the next few weeks to re-ignite my interest.

[westsky]

Hi Rohan , from my experence with meade goto's you must train the drives, I have converted two of my EQ5 mounts to Meade goto's and had the same problems as you describe this ended after I trained the drives, Don't give up on Goto yet it is a good aid in light polluted sky's

David.

[Striker]

Rohan,

That sounds ordinery......Mine has never stuffed up like that...sometimes the first alignment star can be well off but then the second is very close.....and away I go.....very rarely the object wouldn't be in the FOV with most of the time always centered....

Have you tried just holding down enter for a couple of seconds after you have alighned...after the alignment just goto say Saturn and make sure its in the center FOV and hold down the enter button....this will ask you if you want to sync on Saturn just enter again....I only do this if I have accidental bumped the scope and gone out of alignment.

Just try it......

I have been amazed how accurate the LX200 have been....and now its sold...go figure...lol

[trufflehunter]

Sorry to hear that, Rohan. You and I received our LX90's at about the same time and my experience has been exactly the opposite. Every Go-To has not only been successful, but the object is dead centre in the middle of the field. The tracking is also spot on. I always use a Meade 12mm illuminated reticle ep (167X) to set the alignment stars, and the last time I left the second alignment star, Denebola, on the cross hair while I fiddled around for about 15 minutes. When I came back, Denebola was still right on the cross hair.

No, for me, the tracking and go-to capabilities of the LX90 have far exceeded my expectations to the point of being scarey!

Are you using Automatic Align? I can't use that because, usually, at least one of the alignment stars that Autostar chooses is behind a tree or a building. Therefore I have to use the 'old fashioned' Two Star Alignment. That way I get to choose my own alignment stars and I've been using Alpha Crucis and Regulus (or Denebola) because they're currently about as far apart as I can get. And 'as far apart as you can get' is what you should aim for.

The only disadvantage of Two Star Align is that you must place the scope in it's "Alt-Azimuth Home Position, meaning level the scope (I use a little 'bulls eye' bubble level) and point it due north (yes NORTH, not SOUTH! it doesn't have to be exact, but the closer you get it due north, the closer the scope will slew to the alignment stars). This was the only method available with the Autostar on my previous LX55-AR6, so I'm quite comfortable with it. Except in the older scope you had to enter the date and time every session. At least with the newer ones, the LNT module holds that info, making it easier. And it's ability to hold the date and time is the only advantage offered by the LNT module, in my view!

I actually prefer the Two Star Alignment, not only because I get to choose the alignment stars, but also it's QUICKER! The scope doesn't have to go through it's 'find north' and 'level' routines. I can manually level it, roughly point it north, tell it to do a Two Star Align and have it up and running in less time (and with more surety) than letting it do its own automatic thing!

Just a thought... speaking of date and time... is yours correct? Is your location correctly entered into Autostar?

I hope this helps in some way. I really feel for you. There's nothing worse than having your hopes dashed. But don't give up hope! The LX90 is a magnificent instrument, and 8" of aperture (in reference to the other fear you mentioned) will show you just about everything in the Autostar database, often in breath-taking detail. Try the ideas I mentioned above and see if that works. If not, then there's just something else that needs 'tweaking'.

By the way... if there IS something I don't like about the LX90, then it's the Red Dot Finder. It's a joke. I just pretend it's not there!

[trufflehunter]

I meant to add... all this is "out of the box". I haven't trained the drives or calibrated the sensors. I haven't needed to! All I've done is added 'bob's knobs', which I'm hoping to use tonight on a star test to get the collimation spot on.

[[1ponders]]

I sorry to hear that things aren't happening for you Rohan. Truffle has the right of it when he says the 8" is a great medium-small scope. The depth of field and clarity are fabulous for this particular type of scope. So persevere. If you haven't already done so some things to check are, do you have a daylight saving option, the scope hasn't defaulted back to the Norhtern hemisphere, your RA drive is centered (release the clutch, rotate the forks all the way in one direction, by hand and then rotate back one turn),

David, Tony and Wayn have hit it pretty much on the head. While I have the LX200 the principle is much the same, except the telescope fills in all the latitude, time etc details for me. Certainly train the drives, though I hadn't when I first go my scope and if functioned fine. (for me, then - I'm a little bit more discerning now). Unless I'm going to a new site I usually only use the two star alignment like Wayne, not the Automatic.

I had a similar problem when I aligned on a star after the autostar selected it, slewed to near it and then asked me to center and press enter. I of course centered the wrong star. after completing the alignment autostar still said "alignment successful" Go figure.

If all else fails, and I mean all else, go into your setup menu and reset everything to default. This means you will have to re-input all your user specific information including drive training info, but at least you will be starting with a blank slate so to speak. there are two main benefits of doing this. 1. If you have inputted somthing incorrectly accidentlaly then it will be erased and the new corrected info will then take over. And 2. You will really get to know your setup menu and manual :) :P. I've actually reset mine 3 times (once accidentally so that doesn't count) simply for that reason - to get to know the menu items on the autostar.

BTW when Autostar slews to a star during alignment it intentionally doesn't slew directly to the star. It deliberately misaligns, so you hve to guide to the star. I'm not sure I understand why, but I seem to recall something about helping to calibrate the alignment process. Sorry i can't be more specific. I'll try to remember where i heard/read about that and let you know.

Good luck

[Dave47tuc]

Well not much i can add, but to say most problems are user input in the AutoStar mistakes. Easy done..:)

Meaning (not sure on the new LX90) but you must enter all information correctly.

Get the tripod level, make sure your alignment stars are in the centre of high power eyepiece.

Train drives.Do this in the daytime on a distance object.

Make sure all settings in the AutoStar are correct. For your location.

Good luck it will work very well once set up right.

:cheers:

[Mick]

I never use Automatic Align, I use two star alignment and pick my stars this works for me. Do you wait for the beep before centring the alignment star? I've never had any problems with tracking or alignment with my Lx90 in 3 years of use. I hope you can sort things out Rohan, Autostar is a wonderful tool.

[acropolite]

Rohan,
I got the latest LX90 in the same shipment. When I do auto alignment, the alignment stars are a couple of degrees out, but once aligned, the goto puts the object at the top right of the view; close enough for now. Sounds like Wayne's method of manual alignment is better. I have yet to correct the Lat/Long which I know is a little out and each time I have aligned I have had metal within a few metres of the scope which would effect it's north sensing. Maybe your LNT module is faulty. My scope was inaccurate out of the box, but I immediately found that Bintel had the wrong date entered and once corrected it performed OK. I had a bit of trouble with the red dot finder but once I got it working correctly I found it really useful. I haven't got anything else to compare with but I'm impressed with the optics so far. Sounds like you have some problems, given that the unit worked fine the first time. I also noticed in one of your other posts, a long DC power cord in the pic, you probably will have a substantial voltage drop over that cable and that could be causing your problems; I would recommend trying it on drycells in the supplied base compartments. If you get some duracells from an office supplies place you should be able to get them for under $1 each. (Meade claim 60 hours to a set but my estimate is more like 6 hours.) That will give you a stable power source for testing and at least eliminate one possibility. Don't fall in to the trap of measuring the voltage on the plug of your cord as this figure is meaningless unless under load. I would also try manual alignment as Wayne suggested, then if it's still faulty give Bintel a call. :bashcomp:

[rumples riot]

Several things have sprung to my mind from my own experiences.

First use an illuminated reticle to do your alignment, you will get excellent alignments if you do this (and also do the train the drives and calibrate sensors). Two make sure you have the right stars. It is very easy to make a mistake and use the wrong star. I have done it several times and I have been involved in this hobby most of my life and still don't know all the star names. Three make sure that you set up your scope on solid ground. I cannot emphasis this enough. I once set up on lawn in my parents yard and wondered why the scope would loose lock all the time. Until it dawned on me that the lawn was providing just a little give and this can make a huge error in the sky.

Yes recheck all information in the system and yes check to see if daylight savings is set. That alone will cause the scope to go to the wrong place all the time.

BTW Truffle you can shuffle betweem stars on Automatic. You can shuffle up and down the list at least 6 times before you have to use it star it chooses.

Anyway Rohan good luck, ask more questions if you need, there are plenty of us here that own Meade Fork mounted scopes. I am sure between all of us your scope will doing what it is meant to in no time.

[Rohan]

there is defianatly nothing wrong with my inputs, date is correct, time is correct (DS is off) and my Lat Long are spot on. Still it points off. Prob won't be able to get out again for 4+ days but will try a few different methods when i do.

I use the auto align and use sirrus and canopus as the stars. It choose them but they are also the brightest for me and im 100% sure where they are. I live very close to the city so light pollution is quite bad.

IN regards to viewing, will be dissapointed untill i see something worth it. At the moment all i see is black with a few stars, but at i'm putting that down to the crap GOTOs.

Thanks for all your comments.

[rumples riot]

The two stars it picks could be part of the problem. I found that when I used both Sirius and Canopus in Alt Az mode that the separation between the stars is not far enough apart. Certainly use as your first star then select another star much further away. This will give your scope much greater angular separation and therefore more accuracy with the calculation for setup.

What surface are you setting up on? Like I said grass can be a problem.

Just remember in terms of what you can see in the city, faint objects will be harder to see. A good example for my scope is centaurus A. A side on galaxy is very very faint in my 10" scope. Using averted vision helps a lot and detail can be seen, but your eyes have to be adjusted. Try for Eta Carina, the dust lanes are easily seen and your scope will pick it up. Orion's nebula is also a good one to see. As is the sculptor galaxy (not available for a couple of months). Just remember that you don't have a 18" scope and somethings will not be seen easily.

Anyway tell me more?

[ballaratdragons]

Good Grief, do you guys really have to go through those precedures every time you want to use your scope? If it is permanently mounted in an observatory do you still have to do this alignment thing each time?

From what I have read above, I don't think I will ever want GoTo.

[Rohan]

No, if its permanatly mounted when you finish your observing session you select the PARK option. This parks the scope and allows you to turn it off but it retains alignment detials. You only have to align it when you move the scope.

[ballaratdragons]

Thanks Rohan, It was really turning me of wanting GoTo. When the time comes for me to get a decent Goto it will be permenently housed.

[Rohan]

and forgot to say earlier that the power supply i use is one bintel supplied me, the cords are quite long so maybe its losing abit of power. Might do a run with batteries one night.

[acropolite]

Ken, you can push the meade around just like a dob if that's your wish. The auto align (using sirius and canopus which at 42 south are almost overhead) takes only a couple of minutes and has been accurate enough on my LX without training. The long cord thing is critical Rohan, most people simply don't realise how heavy cables should be at 12 volts. I used to be a solar dealer and saw many cases where excessive resistance in 12 volt cables caused 12volt flouros to burn out. The cure was always the same, usually 6mm sq cable. If you've got say 4 x 15W 12volt flouros you've got just on 6 amps of current. Just 0.5 ohm of resistance and you've lost 3 volts and given that 12 Volt flouros don't work below 10.5 volts you can imagine the consequences.

[Rohan]

sorry acropolite, im not an electrician so all that doesnt mean much to me. I do get the long cord = bad thou.

[ballaratdragons]

Nah, when I get a GoTo I'll use the computer to do the work. I'll still keep the Dob for push/pulling around the sky.

What I really want is a huge reflector GoTo. Bit worried about keeping a corrector plate clean.

[acropolite]

have a new found respect for you dobbers, how you get there in the first place amazes me and you must keep nudging all the time to keep your target.

[ballaratdragons]

Yep! Dob. - Stone-age astronomy and it's challenging at times, but fun. It gives a certain pride in finding stuff!! Especially very faint DSO's.
It sounds funny but often when I am nudging (hand-tracking) I don't notice that I am doing it. You just get used to it. Until I lose the object and start squiggling the blasted thing around in frantic panic!!! "Where did it go". That's when we instantly remember we are Dobbing.

I can imagine your response when you 'GoTo' an object. "Wow! That is stunning".

Whereas us Dobbers say "WOW!! I found it!!!!!!!"

[iceman]

Rohan,
It sounds like you're getting pretty disgruntled about it which isn't a good thing.. Is there anyone around your area that can help you iron out any problems? If it really is a lemon you need to return it, but you need to get a 2nd opinion first I guess.

I think 'stringscope' is from canberra, and bird also. Can you take your scope along to any CAS meetings and get other SCT owners there to give it a try?

[Rohan]

there is a deep sky night on tomorrow but unfortunatly my other passion (dance music & DJin) calls me on weekends so i am unable to attend. I hope to get out to dark site 20min away some time next week, i'll try training the drives there and also use some different stars for alignment. See what happens after that.

[acropolite]

Rohan,

My LX seemed to do the same wierd thing (on Auto Align) as yours tonight so I spent some time trying to diagnose the problem with auto alignment. :confuse3: Every time I have used the LX so far it has been around 8-9pm and the alignment and goto have worked perfectly. Tonight it was after midnight. The first two nights at 8-9pm the LX was pointing very close to the alignment stars (Sirius and Canopus) but tonight the LX was 90 degrees (az) out with Canopus, the first star selected for auto align. Once I worked out where Canopus was and pointed to it the LX then pointed to the second alignment star (Rigel Kent) reasonably accurately. Once alinged with Rigel Kent the goto was spot on with Jupiter appearing in the centre of the crosshairs on the finder. Are you 100% sure that you are correctly identifying the alignment stars. Rigel kent is a good choice because it's a bright double and almost impossible to mis-identify. My initial guess is that it may be a software bug with the LX incorrectly slewing to the first alignment star. I will try again at various times both before and after midnight and see if I can track down the problem as I suspect it may be time related. I still haven't trained the drive but I have corrected the Lat/Long with figures from my GPS. Unfortunately in the hour it took to work out what was going on the dew beat me, but not before I had checked out a few favourites. Hope this helps, I will check further the next clear night.

[Rohan]

alignment stars i am identifing are defianatly correct, no doubt about that.

[acropolite]

Found my problem with poor initial pointing to alignment stars. In correcting the Lat/Long I correctly entered the Long but omitted to change the default from West to East. Funny though, once aligned it wasn't a problem. I didn't even notice until I connected the laptop with the Autostar suite and noticed the "West" in the menus. :ashamed:...:ashamed: Have you checked to see if you have South and East set in your Lat/Long Rohan??

[Librarian64]

I just received my LX90 last week and after a few teething problems with auto alignment I think I've got the hang of it. I was beginning to get a bit frustrated as the first 2 attempts the alignment stars seemed too far out to be realistic. However as someone above pointed out, perhaps this is intentional to allow for manual fine tunings. I like the ease of the red spot smart finder thingy; combined with the other finder, it makes for very quick and accurate fine alignment. Last night the first alignment star was Canopus; quite a long way of the mark. I aligned it than it chose Rigel Kent which was also a little bit out but closer than Canopus had been. I aligned it. Got the 'alignment successful' prompt, then like acropolite used the GOTO for Jupiter and it slewed for an almost perfect dead center view. I have to say it was pretty exciting for me. I love the way the scope seems to stop moving before the alarm but when you look throught the eyepiece the scope is still slowly tracking in. Watching Jupiter slide almost dead center was an extremely satisfying experience.

This was out of the box. I didn't have to train the drives or calibrate the sensors. Also the optics were perfect as an out of focus star was a perfect donut shape.

I'm very happy with my choice of scope. I know how much SCTs are criticised for their optics. However Jupiter looked stunning to me and I really can't complain at all.

I must try the two star method as It sounds like it may be the best overall way to align scope.

[Rohan]

heading west to a dark site this weekend. About to download new updates to autostar. Hopefully everything will go well.

[Mick]

The alignment stars are never going to be dead on, you have to centre the stars to achieve the "alignment successful" prompt that’s the point. After "alignment successful" the Lx90 should goto and track accurately.

[Iddon]

recently purchased Paul's Lx200 GPS. The GOTO is snappy and spot on target (thats for that training Paul). The 2 star align works a treat.

As a neophyte, I have found GOTO to be a fantastic way to learn the sky. Adding the laptop for click and point gives a great visualisation of your place in the sky with the planetarium software, and also lets you see all the proximate objects in each small part of the sky.

[acropolite]

I probably should have added that my problems were all caused by buggy software. It turns out that the version of Autostar I had (Ei) had a problem when an additional (second) custom site was entered. Since updating my problems have gone, although auto align is quite a few degrees out on the initial stars. The version I updated to was El but I notice that now version Ec is out (can't quite figure how meade allocates their version numbers)

[Rohan]

yeap i've got EC downloaded. hopefully get time tonight to upload it.

[Rohan]

Well finally got a chance to put the scope to the test over the weekend. Headed out to Griffith in central NSW to get some dark skies. Only porblem was the weather wasn't so friendly to me and it rained the entire first night. They got 1inch which i guess is the most important thing since they are suffering from the drought.

Anyway the next afternoon the weather cleared and i was excited about a clear night. Then of course just on sunset the clouds rolled in and it looked like another lost chance. Was checking the sky all night and about 10pm it cleared so i set up. Had the laptop running Starry Night Pro 5.0 and was wired in to the scope so it followed it everywhere. Also had all my eyepeices set into SNP5 so it could show me what i should be seeing.

Went to setup and found one problem. In canberra it is easy to find two alignment stars cause there just ain't to many to choose from. Out at Griffith there were millions and trying to align with the right one proved to be a challange. Especially cos i had a crowd waiting for their first glimpse of Jupiter. Eventually got it setup and alignment was succesful. Then went to GOTO jupiter and it pointed to the opposite end of the sky. So trying to avoid embaresment i slewed around to Jupiter and re-synced the GOTO on it. From then on the GOTO was very accurate and always got the object in the eyepiece but it always required a small bit of adjustment to centre it.

Overall a good night (only got 1 outta 3 viewing nights). Was still abit disapointed when trying to observe some nebulae and galaxies. Just couldn't see anything at all thru the eyepiece which was a shame. The laptop showed the telescope been spot on the object and i could match up some starts nearby and such but defianatly not what i was expecting. I'm putting that down to the fact the human eye just isan't sensative enought to pick up small detail. The only other downer was Dew was intense. The telescope was fine with its heater but everything else was just getting soaked so eventually had to pack up.

Was great to see such a bright sky though and i will now be planning a few trips out there each year to do some photography once i get my EOS 350D.

[[1ponders]]

Don't worry Rohan, you'll get the hang of viewing. It takes a bit of time to teach yourself how to see things, then you'll be amazed at how you missed them all before.

[Iddon]

great to hear. Have only had my Lx200 for a few weeks now and the learning curve is steep. Sounds like you are on target now :) That initial pointing sounds weird though.... If you do a successful and accurate 2 star align then I find that the planets or key stars are always well inside the 26mm EP after a GOTO command.

[Librarian64]

I had my first great night of viewing with my LX90 on Saturday night. The weather held off long enough to get an hour or so of viewing time. It started with a perfect alignment which stayed that way the whole time. My girlfriend and her daughter were both as excited as I was at the accuracy of the GOTO. We viewed Jupiter first as you do and I'd been dying to see Omega Centuri so that was next and was just stunning. We looked at the Jewel Box and Butterfly open clusters which proved very popular with the women; gasps of ooh how pretty and the like. Then we had a look at M104 which was my first distant galaxy and a thrilling moment for me. Averted vision really brought the detail out. We had a look at the Triffid and Lagoon nebulae but they were a little disappointing. I couldn't see a thing when looking at the Triffid but the Lagoon showed some whispy nebulosity. I have some filters but wasn't sure which one to use and the dew was becoming a problem by that stage. Any suggestions for next time?

Anyway the worst thing was I snapped the SmartFinder lens when putting the scope away. I was a bit annoyed because it so useful for a quick alignment. I wonder how much it will be to replace.

[Rohan]

hmmmmmmm guess i'll just have to keep trying. I'm yet to have that thrilling moment when viewing :ashamed:

[Librarian64]

I'm sure it'll happen. Make sure Omega Centuri & M104 is on your hit list for next time.

One thing that Peter from Astro-Optical Supplies suggested when using Auto Align was to set the scope facing roughly North and level it manually first. Treat the scope as if it has a home position. Even though the manual doesn't say to do this Peter said it might help.

[acropolite]

I had the same problem with faint objects, particularly galaxies, but it was simply that the sky wasn't as dark as it could have been and on later viewing sessions they were there although it sounds like you had dark skies Rohan. I also took mike's advice and bought an eye patch and that makes a big difference in my environment. I found that accurate collimation, once the OTA has cooled, also makes a big difference on the LX. My biggest problem seems to be getting detail on Jupiter. I've yet to determine whether its' seeing, insufficient cooling or some other factor but I'm certainly not seeing the sort of detail that others tell me I should with the LX; only time will tell.

[Rohan]

My site was about as dark as they come so defiantly wasn't that. Omega Cen was fine, 1000's of stars, no problems there. My tripod is always level, i have a little spirit level in my kit. And the scope is usually pointing north as well. Just trying to get that glimpse of neb or galaxy. Maybe i need some better eyepieces. Just got the stock meade 26mm and some bintel plossls atm.

[xstream]

If you really want to be blown away with your views through the LX90 I highly recommend getting a 27mm Pan and a 12mm type4 Nag. I can guarantee you will not be dissappointed with them. Even just get the 12mm you'll hardly use anything else in the LX90.

[Rohan]

Cheers john, will keep that in mind.

[Librarian64]

I will look at getting the 12mm Nag but it looks like I won't get much change out of $600!

[xstream]

About enough to buy 3 middies. :D