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Friday 27 March 2009

Astronomy Now Review

The book has finally been reviewed in Astronomy Now, April Edition.
Nick Howes was the reviewer, he is a regular contributor to the magazine.

It was a mixed review to say the least. The first and last paragraphs were very positive and quite flattering. However the middle bit was what I can only describe as diametrically opposite to the other paragraphs.
There were a few points that Nick discussed:
1. Unpacking and Handling
From personal experience I did not find setting up the telescope from out-of-the-box, what Nick described as blindingly obvious. On the contrary feedback from other owners of the telescopes suggested that including the 'obvious' tasks would be beneficial for someone who has never owned these type of telescopes before.
2. Focusing methods
I agree that there are numerous methods for enhancing the focusing of a telescope. However, I do not know of have not heard of any owner that has placed wires across the objective of their telescope in order to improve the focus quality. I am not suggesting that it is not a good idea (I may even try it out one day!!), but I cetainly believe that it was not appropriate for the intended target audience of the book.
3. Quality of Images
Nick commented that perhaps the deep sky images could have been of sufficient quality to 'sell' the telescope. However, I think that the images provided was of sufficient quality to show the 'potential' of what an LXD can do given the right equipment and expertise.
4. Autoguiding
At the time of writing the sentiment amongst members of the LXD user groups suggested that autoguiding using the Aux port via a #909 port converter was not easy to get working. In fact the LPI provides sufficient means to autoguide via the RS232 port and the Meade AutoStar Suite. I considered writing several more pages on autoguiding but decided that there are plenty of resources on the internet that goes into much greater detail on autoguiding with Autostar.

There was no mention of the actual content of the book, such as the complete breakdown of every Autostar function, approximate times of various set up tasks and a whole chapter dedicated to Polar alignment.

I dont mind some criticism, but given that most other reviews were very positive (Mike Weasner, Ian Morison, ebay and Amazon), I expected this one to be no different! In fact Nick missed a couple of technical howlers that Mike Weasner picked up.

In conclusion, although I am pleased that the review was on the whole a positive one some of the review content was dissapointing.

The book should be reviewed shortly in the next FAS newsletter so we'll see whether it will be a positive one or not.