[masraum]

Originally Posted by wcc

That's really cool! I'm an amateur for sure... After constant asking from my son we bought him a inexpensive telescope.

We've spent a TON of time looking through it so I thought we'd upgrade. Not that it's the best but it's quite better then the cheap one. I got the moon filter and the digital camera adapter so we can take pics too. Haven't done that yet as it's so new to us.



So it's been even better! It's just I really don't know what the hell I'm doing with this stuff so I don't know if it's even set up right. I think I actually need to read the directions...

Mike B/Pazazu is the resident telescope expert, so he'll probably chime in at some point.

It looks like you've got a 6" Newtonian telescope on an Equatorial mount (the most complicated). I'm not sure if you've got the mount setup right or not because I've got a similar telescope (Newtonian), but it's on a Dobsonian mount (the least complicated).


I do think that it's unusual for the focus knobs to be above the focus tube, but I think it's just how you have the mount rotated. If that picture was taken from a bit more to the left, so you were looking down the business end of the scope, you've got the counterweight on the right and the scope on the left, you'd want to rotate the scope about 180° clockwise. Then the focus knobs would be below the focus tube and the finder would be above that. That's a more normal orientation.

more like this.