From: "Gary Williamson" 
To: 
Reply-To: "Gary Williamson" 


Hello,
        My name is Gary Williamson and I have just subscribed to the list and
could
use a little advice. Please bear with my story, I will try to keep it
short. I have not been involved in much Amateur Astronomy and no ATM for
about 13 years, due to health issues, retirement from the military, etc.,
but my interest was rekindled recently, when I stumbled across 165 back
issues of Sky and Telescope from the 70s and 80s for 20 cents each at a
local thrift store here in Charlotte, NC. I quickly bought them all and
have been reading them these last few weeks and have gotten bit by the ATM
bug, again. I hauled out my old Meade 2120 LX5 SCT, cleaned and aligned the
optics, took it a few times and said to myself "same old mediocre
images". I then got my old 12.5" University Optics mirror kit
with the half-finished mirror and decided to finish the 12.5" f/6.5
scope I started years ago.
        But I am realising that I am way behind the times in regards to ATM and
even Amateur Astronomy. The information I seem to be finding on the Web,
today, leads me to believe that more ATMers are leaning toward a
lightweight Dobsonian mount on an equatorial platform, similar to the old
Poncet table. Is this true and why? Here in Charlotte, NC light pollution
is so bad that deep sky observing is difficult, so I am wanting to build a
scope mainly for planetary or lunar observing and photography, so I will
need drives for both axes. I had been considering building a fork mount
using fiberglass over foam core products (or whatever is available
today)with a truss OTA, but maybe I should consider a lightweight truss
Dobsonian on an equatorial platform. What would be the pros and cons? If I
choose the latter, the question is immediately raised about converting
Alt-Az coordinates to RA-Dec coordinates; how is this easily accomplished?
This leads to the next obvious question of how to integrate a laptop pc or
PDA to a non-commercial scope. Willmann-Bell has a book on this but it is
copyrighted 1997 and my being in Information Technology by profession leads
me to think that this information might be a little out of date today. I am
not a programmer, so there would be a learning curve for me if I have to
write code.
        Could someone point me in the right direction to get information seeing
that I am so behind the times? I am not asking for someone to make
decisions for me, just some direction so I can decrease my information gap
and make informed decisions. I have just subscribed to Sky and Telescope,
again, but was disappointed to see that Gleanings for ATMs no longer exists
and Telescope Making is out of print.
        Thanks for taking the time to read this rambling post and thanks in
advance
for any advice.
        Gary Williamson

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