anyone know anything re:old sears telescope?
savdxgrace
my brother's when he was young, and my father gave it to my sons. i
would like more information how to use it. the 'plate' that is on it
says: SEARS MODEL NO. /4/-6323A 15X - 60X D=60mm VARIPOWER
TELESCOPE COATED JAPAN does anyone have an old manual? is it worth
anything? i was thinking about selling it. it is on a nice metal
tripod. i would appreciate any information. thanks!!
Ben
Savdxgrace,
Hang on to it and use it. It's a great grab n' go. I used
one for several years and my brother is using it now. Does it
have a diagonal that will accept 1.25" eyepieces? If not you
can adapt it so that it will. I remember that the 0.96" Rank -
Kellners that came with mine were especially crummy. I
figured out how to adapt an old bino EP for it and it worked
very well giving about 40x.
The Japanese firm that made them also subed them
out to Meade who put their name on them. I don't know who
the firm was. I called Meade about it and they were not very
forthcoming.
On one very good night I could plainly see the dark globules
in the Rosette Nebula with it. If you put some good EP's on it
it is a very usable scope. Weighs about 15 pounds too.
Ben
90.125 n 35.539
savdxgrace
thank you, ben, for your kind response. i hate to admit it, but i know
absolutely nothing about astronomy except where orion is and the big
dipper. i guess i need to get an elementary book on astronomy and how
to use the telescope (any suggestions?) so i can use this with the
kids. i don't know what the 'diagonal' is, so i can't even answer your
question. we live in florida and have wonderful clear nights (usually)
without a lot of city lights to interfere with stargazing... i would
like to know how to use it. it would be great to be able to see the
rosette nebula (if i knew where it was! sorry, told you i was a newbie
to this...). thanks again.
savdxgrace
Starlord
Telescope Buyers FAQ
http://home.inreach.com/starlord
--
There are those who believe that life here, began out there, far across the
universe, with tribes of humans, who may have been the forefathers of the
Egyptians, or the Toltecs, or the Mayans. Some believe that they may yet be
brothers of man, who even now fight to survive, somewhere beyond the
heavens.
The Lone Sidewalk Astronomer of Rosamond
Telescope Buyers FAQ
http://home.inreach.com/starlord
Sidewalk Astronomy
www.sidewalkastronomy.info
The Church of Eternity
http://home.inreach.com/starlord/church/Eternity.html
"savdxgrace" <poko...@msn.com> wrote in message
news:1173025936....@i80g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
Ben
>
> - Show quoted text -
Savdxgrace,
(1) Read over Starlord's link thoroughly.
(2) Get yourself some good maps. Sky publishing
has about the best commercially available.
(3) Learn the telescope components. The diagonal is
that little triangular fixture the eyepiece goes into -
there's a little prism in there which turns the light
beam at a right angle to make the viewer's
position more comfortable.
(4) The Rosette Nebula is just East of Epsilon
Monoceros which is ca. 5 deg E of Betelgeuse
in Orion.
(5) Continue living in Florida away from city
light polution.
Now here's a tough one: Is your mount an equatorial
or an altazimuth? Look at your adjustment knobs. If
there is a knob right on the top circular housing of your tripod
(horizontal axis) that allows the whole mount to move
horizontally it is an equatorial. You will have some learning
to do. (However if you learn the equatorial YOU CAN'T
MISS when searching for something.) If it doesn't have
that knob it's an altazimuth and it's easy to get started.
Take it out and experiment with it - that's important.
Look em' up,
Ben
90.126 n 35.539
AstroApp
>On Mar 4, 10:32 am, "savdxgrace" <pokor...@msn.com> wrote:
>> On Mar 3, 9:44 pm, "Ben" <bet71...@netzero.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> > On Mar 3, 7:55 pm, "savdxgrace" <pokor...@msn.com> wrote:
>>
>> thank you, ben, for your kind response. i hate to admit it, but i know
>> absolutely nothing about astronomy except where orion is and the big
>> dipper.
>
>Savdxgrace,
>(1) Read over Starlord's link thoroughly.
>(2) Get yourself some good maps. Sky publishing
> has about the best commercially available.
>(3) Learn the telescope components. The diagonal is
> that little triangular fixture the eyepiece goes into -
> there's a little prism in there which turns the light
> beam at a right angle to make the viewer's
> position more comfortable.
>(4) The Rosette Nebula is just East of Epsilon
> Monoceros which is ca. 5 deg E of Betelgeuse
> in Orion.
>(5) Continue living in Florida away from city
> light polution.
May I add some comments?
This telescope has a narrow field of view compared to a modern one
with the type of eyepieces made now and sold even with good beginner
telescopes. It will be best suited to looking at things that are
bright and pretty easily seen in a fairly narrow field of view.
You might put it at low power and try to look for Jupiter, and
increase the magnification and examine the four moons, the bright dots
that will be close to the much larger globe of the planet. I can't
possibly tell you how excited I was by this, fifty years ago! I had a
metal tube telescope very much like this although I could not use it
higher than 30 diameters of magnification. You could easily see that
Jupiter looked VERY different from a star, and make out that it had a
spherical shape and some blurry or fuzzy differences of contrast. In
a bigger telescope this would be resolved into its cloud bands, but I
couldn't do that in the small refractor.
I remember also that I could tell, at 30x, that Saturn did have a ring
around it. Today we're all so biased in our expectations, having seen
Hubble pictures, that we don't get excited by a view in a 60 mm
aperture telescope. I did, 50 years ago, though! Then even the
pictures of Saturn taken by professional observatories were worse than
those done by a large number of folks who post here.
It is also possible to sweep the telescope through the Milky Way
(which of course you can see by naked eye in a dark sky.) Choose what
you think might be a bright spot seen by eye; then put your telescope
on it at 16x and move it around. You may be able to see some open
star clusters and globular clusters. I think that the famous Swan
Nebula (M17) will be recognizable in your scope, if it is in good
adjustment and isn't too dirty by now. Again: the sky must be clear
and you have to be away from city lights. You should also wait for
about 20 minutes to a half-hour to let your eyes adjust, and not use a
bright white flashlight.
I might just offer a *slightly* different opinion than Ben's about the
Rosette nebula in such a telescope (though I too very much enjoy
seeing what he mentions.) This nebula is very large and wide. To see
it and find it at all, by sweeping your scope around that part of the
sky, you may find you need a rather different kind of instrument (a
large telescope with what is called a short focal length; a wide angle
eyepiece; and maybe even a special filter.) If you get your scope
RIGHT on the center of it, you can find a kind of rectangular
arrangement of bright stars; way around them are an extremely faint
halo of glowing gas. The human eye -- at dim light levels, at night
-- isn't very sensitive to the deep red color of this gas, so you
could pass right over it, time and again with a small, inefficient
scope with narrow field, and not realize it was there. Don't be too
self-critical if you can't see it. Ben mentions the "Bok globules"
which are tiny and obscure and hard to find and perceive, in my
opinion, and which a beginner who knows little about astronomy isn't
likely to be able to detect right off. Ben doesn't say how much he
knew about observing the Rosette when he saw them with such a small
scope; the fact that I have a different opinion does not mean of
course that he's wrong: ask two amateur astronomers a very specific
question and you'll get two quite different answers! In a way, this
is like asking for opinions on art and politics: everybody has unique
ones and often there's no "right and wrong" because we're all so
different.
However, I'd suggest, instead, trying the "great nebula of Orion".
This has the numerical designation M-42 (Messier 42) and is found
below the "belt" of Orion, three bright stars in the center, somewhat
tilted, of the large asterism (star pattern arrangement) that you say
you can recognize. In a dark sky, you can look closely by naked eye
and tell that this spot is slightly fuzzy: it will show up that way
dramatically in binoculars. Put your telescope on that spot at 16x;
look at it; and crank up the magnification. This whole region is a
wonderful source of phenomena that you can learn to discern, including
closely-positioned stars for testing your scope's resolution and
performance (the "Trapezium") and the fantastic shapes and contrasts
of the nebula.
When you look at it, remember that the light has taken 1500 years of
time to reach us! The telescope -- even this old relic -- is the only
form of Time Machine that we have now!
My wife and I have put together some general information for starting
folks out with a scope like yours. It also has links to some other
amateur webpages with information for beginners. In particular, it
has some information about cleaning the optics that might be helpful.
I'll mention this *once* here, just this one time.
The web page was originally a help file in an old astronomy program
that I wrote years ago, which Regina and I have updated. Other folks
might care also to pass on their favorite links for starting with
astronomy and using a telescope.
http://home.earthlink.net/~8-h-haggis/observing/beginners.htm
AstroApp
Cant Please Morons
Ben wrote:
> On Mar 3, 7:55 pm, "savdxgrace" <pokor...@msn.com> wrote:
> > i have an old sears telescope that i would like more info on. it was
> > my brother's when he was young, and my father gave it to my sons. i
> > would like more information how to use it. the 'plate' that is on it
> > says: SEARS MODEL NO. /4/-6323A 15X - 60X D=60mm VARIPOWER
> > TELESCOPE COATED JAPAN does anyone have an old manual? is it worth
> > anything? i was thinking about selling it. it is on a nice metal
> > tripod. i would appreciate any information. thanks!!
>
> Savdxgrace,
>
> Hang on to it and use it. It's a great grab n' go. I used
> one for several years and my brother is using it now. Does it
> have a diagonal that will accept 1.25" eyepieces? If not you
> can adapt it so that it will. I remember that the 0.96" Rank -
> Kellners that came with mine were especially crummy. I
> figured out how to adapt an old bino EP for it and it worked
> very well giving about 40x.
> The Japanese firm that made them also subed them
> out to Meade who put their name on them. I don't know who
> the firm was.
if you dont know the name of the firm how do you know
V I X E N was a japanese firm?
Ben
I don't that know those scopes were Vixens. I suspected they
might have been because their objective glass was *very* good.
They couldn't pick up galaxies very well but they were quite
good on nebulae even without filters. (!?)
Anyway it was the 70's and the Japs had found a niche
in the American market and consequently were doing good
work. Still are. But the Sears admen got hold of them and
began to declare that they were capable of 450x. They
weren't. I could take mine up to 140x without any trouble
but only after I bought some new eyepieces.
You tell me - were those scopes Vixens?
Ben,