![]() And there are occasional failures and weird behaviors requiring hours of troubleshooting-hours which could be spent at the eyepiece instead. Neither works accurately, and you end up having to align on two known stars most of the time, meaning you need to have a basic understanding of the motions of the sky and some bright stars to find in it. It’s an advertised feature that supposedly lets you align on any three objects, or by pointing the scope north and leveling it. Most, or even the best computerized GoTo scopes, require a two-star alignment. Most computerized scopes have no internal clocks and require re-alignment if power is lost, even briefly. Your typical computerized telescope has an interface basically the same as it had 20 years ago, with a small hand controller with the processing abilities of a pocket calculator, a small LCD screen with calculator-like text, and many functional limitations. You usually can’t move them at all manually without ruining the alignment we’ll get back to this later.įurthermore, GoTo is not an exceptionally modern technology, having been around for three and a half decades now. They require constant power, usually a 12-volt portable power supply (basically a car battery) or lithium-ion battery packs. Why do we often recommend Manual over GoTo Telescopes?Ĭomputerized telescopes are not for everyone. Many beginning astronomers start with computerized telescopes since they offer many advantages, like requiring less (but contrary to popular belief, not zero) knowledge about the night sky to find objects, hands-free automatic tracking, and the ability to move the telescope with a button, which induces fewer vibrations than manual pushing.
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