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Pointing Telescope on a Non-GOTO Mount

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Once you acquire a telescope, it is important to know how to point the telescope to a celestial object such as a nebula or galaxy so that you may be able to see the object and photograph it. If you have a GOTO mount, you enter or select name of the object such as Orion Nebula or Andromeda galaxy and the telescope slews and points it towards the object. The GOTO mounts are costlier than the those without the functionality. In case you have a non-GOTO mount, how do you do it? In any case, you need a tracking mount  – the mount moves automatically to compensate for the rotation of Earth so that the object in the viewing field of the telescope doesn’t go out of the field – to see or image for minutes. Non-tracking mount might be good enough only for observing and imaging planets. Pointing Telescope Without Camera This case is fairly simple. You directly see the object through eyepiece of the telescope by moving your telescope appropriately using manual controls provided with t...
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Introduction to Astrophotography

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Regular news about alignment of planets, their form in the sky, their closest approach to Earth and related other news that I used to read in the newspapers every year made me think about knowing more about them. They inspired me to see them with my eyes. After building my own house, I had that opportunity to look at the sky unhindered from its terrace. I was pleasantly surprised that I didn’t need a telescope to see the planets Venus, Mars and Jupiter. Even Saturn could be seen, though like a speck. I was very eager to see bands of Jupiter and rings of Saturn. Hence, I bought Meade DS2114-S reflector telescope, sometime around 2005.  Even though it is a 5.5” telescope, I could barely see the bands or rings. I was disappointed. I didn’t use it for many years. Surely, I didn’t know how to observe planets properly with a telescope at that time. The situation didn’t change even now because I’m more interested in deep sky objects than planets. Aren’t planets very close by?! When...
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