USER OBSERVATIONS Last updated: 19 February 2003

Subject:	etx 125
Sent:	Wednesday, February 19, 2003 0:39:22
From:	p.v.camerijk@wxs.nl (Peter van Camerijk)
Here another message from Holland and a very satisfied user of the ETX
125.

Finally we are blessed with super clear nights after a terrible time!!!!
The seeing was incredible the last few nights so I had to go outside
with my ETX. I haven't seen so many objects since I bought the mighty
ETX (january 2002). And that in 3 nights. The moon was almost full so
real deepsky objects were not visible but a lot of starclusters and some
galaxies were clearly visible. Mighty M42 was there to watch and this is
still one of my favorites. If you use the Meade broad band nebular
filter (# 908b) it is amazing how much more details you can see!!! I
recently bought a contrast booster filter from Baader, Germany. I am
very pleased with it: it is wonderful for Jupiter and the moon and some
nebula's.

I was very lucky to see Io and Europa crossing Jupiter at the same night
AND with tremendous good seeing.......this was really a awesome super
sight......I saw the moons itself and their shadows and then also lots
of details in the belts and zones. I even saw the GRS.

Of course I have been looking to Saturn: I saw the shadow of the planet
on the rings, the Cassini division around the full circumference of the
rings, some belts on the surface of the planet AND I saw the ilusive
Crepe ring!!!!!! The first time ever!!!!

The GoTo's were very good: a few times I had a direct hit with my SWA
13,8 WITH barlow (this is 275 x!!!!). By the way, this combination (SWA
13,8 with 2x barlow) is very, very good. I sometimes use my 9,7 mm
superplossl with the 2x barlow (391 x!!!) and still the view are great
with nearly no image break down but with the SWA you get such beatiful
views when you are eye-balling through the splendid views!!! I use it
all the time on planets and all objects that can handle more power:
these images are beautful and very bright, with lots of details and
absolutely no image break down. A very BIG recommandation for the ETX
125!!!!

But not everything went so smooth as descripted: one thing puzzled me
with the autostar:

On tuesday night I was observing the moontransits of jupiter and I went
inside to have a nice warm coffee (it was freezing about  degrees
Celsius with some wind) and to warm up a little bit. I let the ETX 125
follow Jupiter during my break. When I went back to the ETX (after about
20 minutes) Jupiter was stil centered at 275 x (which is pretty good for
the ETX, isn't it??) but the Autostar's display was black allthough the
ETX was moving (by the way, I use polar setup with a wedge and rough
polar allignment on Polaris well ok a bit of Polaris ofcourse). It
looked like Autostar was in sleep mode!!!! I pushed the ENTER button
(which I should not , I expect!!!!) and than my Autostar was a little
bit grumpy: it slewed with high speed away from Jupiter as if it was
saying to me: get lost, I am a sleep and it is vey cold!!!! Afterwards
there were no problems at all so i am a little bit confused. I geuss I
should not press the ENTER button similar with the SLEEP function but I
want to be shure what happened.

I hope you can give me a answer.  I use the 2.6 Ec version of the
Autostar software!!!

By the way: I finally got you're book (I won't bother you with shipping
details and the time it took to get it) an I really like it. I read a
lot in it. Thank you for the good job and keep on going!!!

Clear skies 
Peter van Camerijk

Ps: due to an collapsed hard drive of my notebook I good not take any
pictures with my webcam. I hope that I can send some pictures soon!

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