Astro Seoul

I couldn’t catch the “smiley face” but I got these from my balcony, taken with my Canon 50D using an EF 17-40mm f/4L USM lens.

This was at ISO 640 for 2 seconds

And a little lighter:

This one was at ISO 800 for 4 seconds

The following was taken with a Canon 50D hooked up to my LX90 with a camera adapter. I found camera shake a problem, as well as shimmering air on the night, and these account for the slightest blurring of the shots I took. This one though was reasonable. I’ll have to get a shutter release cable.

Taken 03-11-08

This is a picture of the Rheita Valley region. The flat area you can see top right is Mare Nectaris and the deep crater below it, about mid photo, is the crater Piccolomini.

Wikipedia says it is a prominent lunar impact crater located in the southeastern sector of the Moon. The crater Rothmann lies to the west-southwest, and to the south is Stiborius. The lengthy Rupes Altai begins at the western rim of Piccolomini, curving to the northwest. The crater is named after 17th century Italian Archbishop and astronomer Alessandro Piccolomini. It is 88 kilometers in diameter and 4,500 meters deep. It is from the Upper Imbrian period, 3.8 to 3.2 billion years ago.

A few hundred kilometers north of Mare Nectaris is were the first moon landing took place.

Proviso

You have to be careful with some outfits. I’ve had stuff sent to me that was clearly second hand. Fortunately, it wasn’t hugely expensive gear. In any case, what can you do 10,000 kilometres away faced with the prospect of shipping costs and a major hassle.

So you have to pick and choose. Here are the ones I’ve used that I recommend for service and that have done everything right by me.

Online Stores I Have Used

I recommend these stores with confidence. (But in life there are no guarantees.)

All Star Telescope - a Canadian shop run by a married couple. Payment is via Western Union money orders up front. I ordered a Barlow Powermate and 32 mm Plossl from them to see how things worked out. My money order was the fast transfer and it incurred a fee of 10%, which was a bit hefty. The store owner, Ken, was very patient and prompt in all of his replies.

Online Stores I Will Consider Buying From

Note: these are not tried and tested.

Scopecity - this is a large chain with a huge stock and stores near US military installations. It even has a store in Guam. This suggested to me that shipping to Seoul could be cheap with them. As yet untried, though. It has a very proactive feel about it, which many astronomy sites don’t give you.

Astroshop- this one is located in Germany and also presents itself as proactive and can-do. It has a very useful shipping estimate key beside each item. As yet untried for service.

I would like to note that I have tried to order from Australian stores but have met fairly lack luster salesmanship. I received my Meade from one but with a second order for accessories, I was disappointed by the result, for several reasons, and will not be ordering from there again. That is why that store does not appear here.

Source: From: http://www.weasner.com/etx/autostar/as_testing.html

Note: you can also do the following test via Autostar and the Comm. Test.

This is for testing a communications between a telescope’s Autostar and a laptop connected with a 505 cable and serial adapter. These instructions are useful as a way of finding out what port it is on and establish that communications are working. If something’s not working, at least you can rule out a communications problem.

The following test is done in Windows, using Hypertermal to communcate with the Autostar. In place of Hyperterminal, you could use any terminal emulation program. The main thing is get keyboard entries to the Autostar and get a response.

First, connect up the Autostar and your computer, but only turn the computer on. Run Hyperterminal and name a New Connection or else just File > Properties to configure a connection. If creating a new connection, a box will pop up with a “Connect using” option.

Choose “Direct to COM1.” Then you’ll get a COM1 Properties pop up. Set it to 9600 bits per second, 8 data bits, Parity: None, StopBits: 1; Flow Control: None.

With Hyperterm set up and running, turn on Autostar. After initialization you may see an “X” appear on the Hyperterminal window. This is good news. It’s a kind of “wake up” signal. Press enter on Autostar to get to the Align option.

Now, type a single control-f on your PC’s keyboard. (You won’t see anything you type in the Hyerterminal window unless under Properties > Settings > ASCII Setup, you have local echo checked.) You should see output from the Autostar with an “A” or “P” depending upon whether it’s set up as Alt/Az or Polar mount. If that works, you’ve got communication!

Problems Connecting

If not, try a couple more control-f’s, but if that doesn’t work, something’s wrong.

Go back into Hyperterminal’s settings and move on to the next COM port. Remember to reset the baud rate, etc. Progress through the COM port offerings until you “find” the Autostar. Try the control-f to test.

If an A or P does appear, you can try #:GVF# (pound-sign colon G V F pound-sign). Again, you won’t see what you are typing, but you should get the response of Autostar’s identification string, including the word Autostar and a time and date (when the firmware version was built at Meade).

Once you have a response on a COM port, exit Hyperterminal. You must exit Hyperterminal if you want to use Meade’s Autostar Suite software on COM1.

Alternative Solution

This is what I did when the machine would freeze when I tried to connect to COM1. Also, the serial jack didn’t work for me no matter which COM port I chose. So, I bought a USE-Serial adapter/converter.

Setting this up is pretty easy. Windows usually detects the cable and installs the hardware for it. It also allots a COM port for it. All you need to do is going into Device Manager and see what the COM port is under the device’s properties, or else assign a COM port to your liking.

Next, go into Hyperterminal and use that COM port to test communications.