Thanks to astrobserver99 and garin for their help with the celestron question. One more thing. Somebody told me that an available application for an iphone is one that will allow you to point it at the sky and for the machine to tell you which star one is pointing to. Is this true? and if so does it work well enough to warrant the purchase of a second hand phone to mount on the top of my telescope? Also, i was told that some of the apple applications work on other phones. Was someone pulling my leg or not? Thanks
For the same price as a second hand iphone you could buy one of these I have not got one yet but i do plan on picking one up when i get some spare $$ lol.
There are a couple of good iPhone Astro apps , Sky Voyager and Starmap pro. Of the two, Sky Voyager is probably the better, the inbuilt GPS and Accelerometer will coordinate the map with the direction the iPhone is pointing to in the sky and I believe slew your mount to that location with some additional hardware.
There is also a wireless add on (SkiFi from Carina) for the iPhone that allows wireless telescope control, I believe Chris (Omeroo) has one working.
The iphone can also be used to wirelessly trigger your DSLR via a laptop using DSLR Remote and allow you to review the result. At the moment there are limitations on Interval timing, but these can be overcome by using single exposures using the Bulb setting.
The only downside is that unless your eyesight is good you may find the iPhone screen a little limiting.
I believe the Ipad will also do the same, someone with a working setup may be able to confirm.
If you use a remote desktop app you can also check on your guiding etc remotely, I have successfully done this with the iTap RDP app and PHD.
