September 2015 Variable Star Work and New Telescope Problems

  I was outside with the 10" F/4 telescope during four mornings in the middle of September and ended up doing a flurry of variable star estimates, including some YSO stars that I've observed in past years and some stars that were on Mike Poxon's list of Eclipsing Binaries that are suspected UXOR stars. (For the latter I'd requested charts with comparison stars from the AAVSO Charts Team; sometimes just days before.) I reported 31 estimates made over those four nights to the AAVSO, and my lifetime total of AAVSO estimates topped 2,000. 

  That's the good news; the bad news is that I still have dozens of estimates made between 2011 and this year that are scattered around in various notebooks, and even on the digital voice recorder, that I still haven't organized and reported. I still need to do that. But these September estimates WERE all entered into the database, and these were my first variable star observations since last May. So at least I ended the October 2014 - September 2015 AAVSO Fiscal Year on a good note.

  I won't go into detail here about these nights in September or all of the past years. I'm going to try to get all of those organized and report the estimates that still need reporting "on the side" instead of doing it on this blog. As far as this blog, I'm going to start "fresh." A new AAVSO Fiscal Year started on October 1st, 2015. And I'm going to make it my goal to report variable star estimates as they occur and keep up from this point on.

  However, I do have to write that during the last night that I did variable star observing, the predawn hours of September 22, I also realized that my 10" F/4 mount was "finished." I'd find a variable star, and then when I was trying to make an estimate ... maybe because I moved the control panel around ... the motors on the mount would suddenly turn on like they had a mind of their own and slew the telescope away from the star field I was looking at! It happened several times and it was frustrating as hell!

  I've had a love/hate relationship with the mount of my Meade LXD55 almost since the day it arrived in November 2002. I could never get the GOTO program to work correctly even though I followed the directions for aligning it as best I could. I gave up on it and tried to just manually move it to targets, but then the Right Ascension gear wheel came loose after just a few uses, making the motor run but keeping the scope from moving east to west (or vice versa) and keeping it from tracking the sky. I did quick fixes to it, but it would keep coming loose, and I never resolved that problem until I replaced the tiny inset screws that held the gear wheels in place in 2005! And by that time the silly little plastic clamps that locked and unlocked the two axes of the mount had broken off, leaving it locked, and moving the telescope with the motors was my only option. The mount always had to be plugged in to move!

  Even with these frustrating issues, I managed to get the mount to work well for the next four years or so, but a new problem happened around 2009 when it just stopped tracking! Engaging the drive caused the telescope to move quickly in the wrong direction! So I just stopped trying to get it to track the sky, and I would "nudge" it with the control pad to try to keep up with the Earth turning. And that worked from 2009 through now.

  I have had issues with the LXD55 mount for all of these years and found ways to overcome these problems, but to summarize, it's really never worked as advertised. And I'm not alone. I've read online posts for years from other LXD55 owners who are constantly fixing their mounts and finally getting rid of them in the end. Meade itself repackaged the LXD55 with a new mount after a few years and called it the LXD75, but then stopped making these telescopes altogether a few years ago.

  But these latest issues in September were the last straw. Let me make a short list of "grievances" and then present what might be some near-future solutions: 

   The 10" scope had always been tough to set up because of that awkward heavy mount. It was a back-breaker!

  It always had to be near the outside outlet by the back door because it always had to be plugged in to a power source to move. (Incidentally, the outlet itself stopped supplying power at the end of September!)

  Though I didn't mention this before, both the main cord to the mount and the cord of the control paddle are frayed with exposed wires, and I've had to tape them for a couple of years. Electrical shorts were always possible.

  The design of the mount meant that the eyepiece was often in a terrible position for me, making it necessary to either become a contortionist to look through the telescope or (what usually happened) making me loosen it up and rotate the tube to a more comfortable position.

  The little finder scope has always seemed inadequate and is always in an awkward position!

  So now here are a couple of possible solutions:

  Last in June I found a website that has a post from 2012 from an amateur astronomer named Dan Demmers who had acquired an LXD55 (I'm assuming from the photos it was a 10" Schmidt-Newtonian) from his older brother, and both had experienced similar issues with it that I've experienced. Dan decided that he either needed to modify it or get rid of it, and he ended up (among other things) putting it onto a wooden Dobsonian mount. The website and post are at tulareastro.org/meade-lxd55-facelift/.

  Dan bought the mount for his scope from a company that custom makes these for OTA's. The company website is www.astrogoods.com. I looked over this site and sent some questions about the weight of the mount, and received prompt replies from Mark Wagner on June 29 and 30. A collapsible mount with clamshell rings, he estimated, was about 30 pounds (compared to the weight of the current mount of 55 pounds) (the OTA of my telescope is about 30 pounds also). His mount would run about $480 total.

  The new mount would be more portable, and it would keep the eyepiece at a desirable angle. It wouldn't track the sky, but my current one hasn't done this in years anyway. It would still require two trips to set up the scope but it wouldn't have to be plugged in and I could set it up anywhere. This sounds like the direction I'll be going in.

  One final note, I also found a site called www.scopestuff.com that sells many telescope accessories, including a 7x50 right angle correct image finder scope that, I think, I can make work with my 10" F/4. It should keep the finder eyepiece at a good level and make targets easier to acquire.

  More on all of this later ... I'm hoping that through this winter I'll refurbish the 10" telescope, and by late winter or spring I'll resume an active AAVSO program.

  Until then, I'm going to finish 2015 by concentrating on meteor observing. The Orionid and Taurid showers, the Leonids, then the Geminids and Quadrantids. That should keep me busy until a little past New Year's Day 2016.