User manual ORION TELESCOPES & BINOCULARS SPACEPROBE3 EQ

[. . . ] INSTRUCTION MANUAL Orion® SpaceProbeTM 3 EQ #9844 Equatorial Reflector Telescope Customer Support (800) 676-1343 E-mail: support@telescope. com Corporate Offices (831) 763-7000 Providing Exceptional Consumer Optical Products Since 1975 P. O. A 10/02 EZ Finder II EZ Finder II bracket Eyepiece Focuser Optical tube assembly Declination slow-motion control cable Declination lock knob Declination setting circle Counterweight shaft Counterweight Counterweight lock knob Right Ascension lock knob (not shown) Right Ascension slow-motion control cable Latitude adjustment T-bolt Right Ascension setting circle Tripod leg Accessory tray bracket Accessory tray Leg lock knob Figure 1. The SpaceProbe 3 EQ. 2 ® Welcome to the exciting world of amateur astronomy!Your SpaceProbe 3 EQ is a high-quality optical instrument designed for nighttime stargazing. [. . . ] "Seeing" refers to the steadiness of the Earth's atmosphere at a given time. In conditions of poor seeing, atmospheric turbulence causes objects viewed through the telescope to "boil". If, when you look up at the sky with just your eyes, the stars are twinkling noticeably, the seeing is bad and you will be limited to viewing with low powers (bad seeing affects images at high powers more severely). Planetary observing may also be poor. 8 regular incandescent flashlight with red cellophane or paper. Beware, too, that nearby porch and streetlights and car headlights will ruin your night vision. 1. 9 4. 9 2. 4 1. 9 1. 7 3. 4 2. 5 2. 4 Figure 7. Megrez connects the Big Dipper's handle to it's "pan". In conditions of good seeing, star twinkling is minimal and images appear steady in the eyepiece. Also, seeing generally gets better after midnight, when much of the heat absorbed by the Earth during the day has radiated off into space. Especially important for observing faint objects is good "transparency"--air free of moisture, smoke, and dust. Transparency is judged by the magnitude of the faintest stars you can see with the unaided eye (6th magnitude or fainter is desirable). One good way to tell if conditions are good is by how many stars you can see with your naked eye. If you cannot see stars of magnitude 3. 5 or dimmer then conditions are poor. Magnitude is a measure of how bright a star is, the brighter a star is, the lower its magnitude will be. 3. 4), which is the star in the "Big Dipper" connecting the handle to the "dipper". If you cannot see Megrez, then you have fog, haze, clouds, smog, or other conditions that are hindering your viewing. (See Figure 7) Cooling the Telescope All optical instruments need time to reach "thermal equilibrium. " The bigger the instrument and the larger the temperature change, the more time is needed. Allow at least 30 minutes for your telescope to cool to the temperature outdoors. Let Your Eyes Dark-Adapt Don't expect to go from a lighted house into the darkness of the outdoors at night and immediately see faint nebulas, galaxies, and star clusters--or even very many stars, for that matter. Your eyes take about 30 minutes to reach perhaps 80% of their full dark-adapted sensitivity. As your eyes become dark-adapted, more stars will glimmer into view and you'll be able to see fainter details in objects you view in your telescope. To see what you're doing in the darkness, use a red-filtered flashlight rather than a white light. Red light does not spoil your eyes' dark adaptation like white light does. [. . . ] To do this, you must loosen the three screws from the end of the optical tube that are flush with the end of the tube. Completely loosen all three of the flush screws (do not loosen the other three screws) until the mirror cell comes out of the telescope. Now, remove the mirror from the mirror cell by removing the three mirror clips that secure the mirror in its cell. Use a Phillips head screwdriver to unthread the mirror clip anchor screws. [. . . ]