A morning romp with the Orion 6XT IntelliScope
Shortcuts for this entry:
- Finder issues
- and then there's the vertical stop
- Not Microsoft
- The Beehive
- Eskimo
- Saturn
- M35
- M3 and M51
- Scope facts just for the record
Hey Scotty, Give me warp .3!
Sorry sir, the best we can do is warp .7 – and that’s stretching these new engines.
Nahhhhh. . . maybe it wasn’t a stretch at all. Maybe I’m just lazy. The manual said you should get warp .5 or less for accurate pointing. Well, I didn’t feel like doing another two-star alignment, so I accepted the warp .7 and guess what! I had a wonderful 90-minute cruise around some distant – but familiar – corners of the universe.
What am I talking about? The sweet little Orion 6-inch Dob “IntelliScope” that just arrived a couple of days ago. In defiance of the “new telescope curse,” when I had it ready and was set to use it, the skies were clear! Of course, for me that meant 3 am this morning. But it was a balmy 32 degrees and when I first got out the transparency was terrible – so terrible that I abandoned my other observing plans and decided simply to test out the new little Dob, particularly its computer brain.
Now you push this Dob to its target and you push it to keep it on target – there are no motors. But in the case of the Intelliscope from Orion (I really don’t like that name, IntelliScope, but hey) . . . . anyway , in the case of this scope you pay another $130 and get a little computer that hooks up to it, knows where it is pointing, and tells you where to point it to find things relatively quickly. In amateur parlance this sort of system is described as “digital setting circles.”
In practical terms, the bottom line on the Dob I receved is an A- minus - and I’m a fairly tough grader. I marked it off because the shoe that holds the bracket that holds the finder scope was not aligned properly and when I gave this scope a quick try two nights ago I could not get the finder aligned with the main scope for the life of me. No amount of adjustment using the prescribed process would get it closer than about 4-degrees of the target – which is not close at all. What did work was to go to the scope’s discussion group on Yahoo(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/skyquest-telescopes/) and do a search on “finder” and sure enough, someone else had encountered the same problem. They found that the shoe was attached to the metal tube by two screws and when you loosened them, there was enough slop in the holes to move the shoe a little and retighten it. I did that and aligned the finder while pointing at the glass insulator on a neighborhood telephone pole in daylight. No problem. BUT . . .while making this fix was not rocket science, it is not the kind of thing I would like to confront someone new to the hobby with – so for this I mark the scope off one third of a grade.
On optics, sturdiness, and the use of the computer, I give it an “A.” Oh – and other people might not mind twisting their necks to use a straight-through finder on a scope, I do. There are times - and this is one of them – when my neck really complains about such contortions – one of the hazards of growing old. So I’m going to order a right-angle finder ($50) because I like using this scope, but I don’t like that aspect of it. (Maybe I can sell the straight-through finder on AstroMart – someone must like these things?)
That said, I don’t think that would bother most people and if you are going to use the finder just to find a couple of guide stars, even I can put up with this situation. And that’s what you do when the computer is up and running. Getting it up and running meant putting in the batteries, connecting it to the scope by a single wire and turning it on. It was ready to go. What it asks you to do is point the scope straight up. This is simple, of course, but they do warn you that this first step is important and when you’re constructing the scope – excuse me, assembling the scope – one of the last things you do is put in a “stop” that is supposed to assure that it points straight up when you point it straight up – I mean, really straight.
and then there's the vertical stop
Well, now that I think of it, that was another little hitch – makes me feel better about assigning the A-minus. Maybe I should make that a B-plus? See, the direction says that you should put a white nylon bushing on the screw and knob that constitute the “vertical stop.” The only bushing I found in the parts package that looked like what they were describing was far too large. With it on, the screw you attach it with was completely hidden. What’s more, this piece was NOT listed in the parts list of the manual. So I went to the Web again and checked the Yahoo list and sure enough, this is a goof. Apparently Orion – or the folks who make this scope in China – changed something, but the change didn’t make it into the manual. What you do need to do is play around with the three washers they give you, plus a level, to make sure that when the scope is pointing up it is really vertical.
That’s the bad news – and really, not very demanding except for the confused directions. The good news is, you do NOT have to place this scope on level ground to use it. Sure, something pretty close to level is only common sense, but you don’t have to worry about it. What the computer needs to know is that the scope is making a 90-degree angle with its base. Which brings me back to 3 am.
I had put the scope in a shed last night so it would be cooled down – a 6-inch mirror can take an hour to reach temperature equilibrium with the outside air if it has been stored inside and it won’t deliver its best until equilibrium is reached. I also brought out a stool to sit on. One thing I like about this scope is that with the stool it is comfortable to use just about wherever it is pointed. That’s important if you want to spend some time studying – and maybe drawing – what you see. And for all you Spartans who are sneering at comfort, I can only say that you’ll see more if you’re relaxed – not asleep, mind you, but relaxed.
Now the manual says that all you need to do to get the computer oriented is point it at a couple of bright stars. Well – after you put it vertical – which the computer asks you to do as soon as you turn it on and politely responds with “Thank you!” when you do this. (Nice touch, Orion – glad to see your computers weren’t infected by the Microsoft germ of seeing how stupid and inadequate they can make a user feel.)
Does this mean you should know the names and locations of some bright stars? Yep! I think Celestron has now found a way around this with their latest “GoTo” system, but I don’t think it’s asking too much of the new scope owner to expect them to be able to identify a handful of the brightest stars in the sky. I choose Arcturus and Regulus this morning and in just a couple minutes was in business. Well – sort of. See, this is where “Scotty” comes in . After I did the two star alignment, he gave me a “warp .7.” No kidding. Well, Scotty is in my imagination, of course, but the computer said “warp .7” after I pointed it at Regulus and hit “enter” and according to the manual I should not be happy with anything larger than a warp .5!
So, should I realign? Naaaaaahhhh . . . that’s my native lazyness coming to the fore. But with the wide field of a 40mm eyepiece (the scope comes with the standard 25mm and 10mm Plossls) and a target as big as M44, I figured I couldn’t miss and I didn’t. Yeah, it wasn’t centered , but it was there and quite nice. ( Now, if you’re new to the game, follow directions. If you get a warp .7, take three minutes and do the alignment again. When you get your selected star in view, switch to the 10mm eyepiece. With it’s narrower field of view it will help you make sure you have it centered and thus give you the best chance for an accurate alignment. )
Even with lousy transparency and at 30X I could count more than 60 M44 (Beehive) cluster members. Does anyone else get off on the little triangles in this cluster? There are three of them that always catch my attention, but I haven’t seen others mention them, so maybe I just have a thing about triangles?
With success at the behive I tried a slightly harder target – M47. Yep. Found it. But I didn’t dally. It’s an open cluster as well, but at this time was still in the trees for me. Understand, I could have found most of the stuff I saw this morning with a quick glance in the finder and a little star hopping. But that’s because these are relatively bright and familiar objects and I have seen them many times. Even so, it was simpler using the computer.
But as a harder test I decided to go for NGC 2392, the Eskimo nebula. While I knew this general region of sky, it would take me a lot of hit and miss to find this from memory. With the computer, I was there in less than a minute. Not dead on- but close enough so some slight movement of the scope brought the target into view.
One minute is about how much time it takes you to hit the “NGC” key, punch in 2392, hit “enter” and then move the scope until the two numbers displayed count down to zero. They recommend focusing on one number first and getting that to zero – or near it – then focusing on the other number. Maybe in warmer weather the computer responds faster, but I found this morning that I needed to move slowly to accomplish this – not painfully slow, just slower than I normally would. To its credit the little scope moves very smoothly and when you stop, it stops, and quiets down very quickly. What’s more, if you move it to “zero” on a horizontal plain, it really stays pointed that way as you move it vertically to zero. There’s a nice , simple tensioning system – turn one large knob – on the scope that keeps the vertical movement smooth. That’s the axis where delicate balance comes into play to compensate when you switch to large, heavy eyepieces – so this adjustment is handy.
One little glitch, though. When I would select an object from the computer’s data base and the guide numbers would appear, they wouldn’t always count down when I started to move the scope. I decided I had to hit the “enter” key first to activate this feature – but that didn’t seem to be the case either. I tried holding down the enter key for a few seconds. Bottom line _ I never found a consistent pattern and I don’t see the answer in the instructions. It wasn’t a big issue. After a little fiddling it would work. But it is a minor irritant and I need to find out if I was doing something wrong, something is wrong with the unit I got, or if it’s just a quirky design flaw.
And 2392? Well, from memory I was hard pressed to tell the difference between the view I had this morning in this 6-inch and what I saw in my Meade LX90 8-inch a few days ago. What’s more, I was able to crank the 6-inch up to 240X and this object takes that magnification nicely – though it moves out of view in about 30 seconds, so you have to chase it. At these higher powers I miss a compensating motor drive that keeps the target in view. However, using the 10mm eyepiece (120x) that comes with it, I found it comfortable and under normal conditions – and after half an hour I had my normal. Mag 5 skies with average seeing - 120X is fine for most objects.
I could, for example, see the major details on Saturn – Cassini division, shadow of the planet on the rings, the South Equatorial Belt and a few moons - all easily at 120X, though I admit they were easier still at 240X. My seeing seldom permits any more power than that anyways. (That was achieved with the 10mm Plossl and 2X Barlow,)
OH – speaking of Saturn, Orion likes to brag that with their system you don’t have to enter data like telling it where you are, But when you go to look at a planet you are suddenly faced with a question you haven’t seen yet – date? It displays a date and you need to correct it to today’s date. Little quirky here, too – you enter the day and it jumps to the next column where you scroll through and choose a month – but this time you need to hit “enter” before it jumps to the next column where you put in the year. And you’re going to have to do that every time you look for a planet on a new date. Again , a minor difficulty – but then the supposed “hassle” of entering time and date and place into other systems isn’t a hassle either – at least with the Meade and ArgoNavis systems that I use. In those cases you enter this information once and from then on it keeps track of things – unless you make a major change in location. So on this basis I find the Orion system a tad more of a pain, but certainly not anything to consider seriously.
About this time I was beginning to feel real good about how a 6-inch reflector could deliver, compared to the 8-inch and 15-inch, ( I haven’t used such a scope since the 70’s hen the love ofmy astronomical life was a Criterion Dynascope. Anyway, I went to a very familiar object, M35. I love this open cluster and its faint companion, NGC 2158 and have spent many a freezing morning with them as my main company. So what was clear to me immediately was that aperture really does count. I have a quick test of this with M35. I count the stars in a particularly nice cascade that dominates this cluster. In the 6-inch I saw a dozen, in the 8-inch I see closer to 20, and with the 15-inch it gets up around 28. Not scientific, but a good reminder that while you don’t get what you pay for – it costs more and more to deliver less and improvement – the larger scopes do deliver.
Still, the 6-inch Dob is a wonderful compromise in terms of cost, ease of use, and ease of storage. One reason I got this rather than the 8-inch version was that I thought – and I was right – that this would be at my comfort limit in terms of easily carrying it in and out of the house. This is important, not only because of deteriorating physical abilities with age, but in terms of what you feel like doing. Lots of scopes gather dust in closets because they are simply too demanding to out and set up. What seems like nothing in your initial excitement, becomes a hobby-killing chore six months down the road. Anyway, you certainly can see every major type of astronomical object with a six-inch, though you’ll see them better - and more of them – with larger scopes.
Driving this point home before the cold got to me, I swung the little scope over to M3, a very nice globular cluster, The halo started to resolve at 120X and conditions wouldn’t let me use 240X on it. I also went to M51 and was real pleased with the view – though I have to think a beginner looking at these two galaxies may not even know if they have found them. We’re talking faint smudges, here. Actually, I would say the same about NGC 2158, the companion cluster to M35.
M35 is gorgeous and no one has any trouble seeing it. Swing the scope to NGC 2158 and I suspect a lot of folks would say something like “what am I supposed to be looking at?” It’s a faint smudge – at least in the 6-inch this morning under my skies. But it fascinates me because I know it is about the same size as M35. Both are wonderful, open star clusters. It’s just that NGC 2158 is six times further away – and looking at the two side-by-side with a wide angle eyepiece, you begin to appreciate what a difference a “little” distance makes. Of course NGC 2158 is only about 18,000 light years away, a minor gap between us and it when compared with the distance between us and the two colliding galaxies of M51. Those two are about 15 million light years away and it is simply mind boggling to imagine what it is you’re seeing – and to know that with these simple, little tools made by the hands of homo-sapiens, we can journey such incredible distances across time and space without leaving our back yards.
A faint smudge, you bet – and an absolute wonder like nothing you have ever seen before – that was M51. I could easily make out the two galaxy cores and get a sense of a spiral shape in the larger smudge that represents the main galaxy. Did it look like it’s pictures? Of course not. But this was real. There simply is a difference between looking at images on a screen and actually being there when the photons come flowing in, tripping circuits in your eyes and pinging your brain. Besides, like being at a ball game, you do this for the whole experience which for me includes the call of an owl – a little unnerving at 3 am, and then later that day finding the tracks of a fox in the snow – a fox that took a detour and checked out my observing site long after I had left it for a cup of tea and the comfort of my library.
Bottom line: I’m confident the six-inch will be a great addition to the public program that is at the heart of my current astronomy activities.. Sometimes it will be used with computer, sometimes without. I also see it as a handy little travel scope – hardly airplane carry-on type, but the sort of thing I can toss in the car when visiting grandchildren, or whatever. Also the sort of thing I can use in sections of my yard that let me see parts of the southern sky that I can’t reach from the fixed observing locations where the larger scopes are. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it enthusiastically to any beginner – though I would also suggest they first buy just the telescope in the “IntellicScope” configuration – but not the computer. Use the scope manually to learn your way around the major objects. Then, after six months or a year, buy the computer to find fainter stuff, or move quickly to the objects that are already familiar to you.
Oh – and that warp factor business. I need to play with this scope more. If I keep getting figures like warp .7, I’ll have to fine tune the vertical adjustment. But then, I suspect my large warp factor was due to casual centering in a wide field eyepiece of the two stars I used in the initial alignment. I should have taken the time to switch to a high powered eyepiece with a narrow field and made certain of my centering. But I was having too much fun on my initial sightseeing tour to waste time on this task this morning – which in itself speaks well for the scope and its computer system.
Scope Facts - just for the Record
- Orion SkyQuest XT6 Intelliscope
- 6-inch, F8
- 25mm and 10mm Plossl eyepieces
- 6X30 finder
- Dobsonian mount
- 34.4 pounds assembled
Price is $359 plus $42.95 shipping
That give you the scope configured with encoders ready to receive a computer controller. You can use it manually as is.
I bought the controller ($129.95) and a metal "holster (18.95) to moount the controller on the base. I'm not sure if this last was a good decisions. It comes with velcro strips and can be ounted that way and that might be just as good.
Also, my cost wil climb by about $50 because I'm going to replace the straight-throuugh finder with a right angle one that is more comfortable for me to use. (Not sure if anyone relly likes the straight through finders.)
Posted by Greg Stone at December 12, 2005 04:49 PM Comments? Please email me: gstone@umassd.edu