Astrotrac Woes

Back at NEAF, I purchased an Astrotrac unit hoping to put it to good use for wide-field astrophotography. I had been looking at the unit for the past couple of years since it first showed up in a few magazines and saw the early units at NEAF. So finally I got my own. I got a reasonably clear nigt for testing in NYC almost immediately and discovered the polar alignment scope, which is supposed to be the same as the Losmand polar alignment scope, had a problem. The magnification is slightly off compared to the etched reticle. For those of you who may have purchased a CG11 mount several years ago (not sure how long) , this might ring a bell. David Kodama explains that Celestron had some scopes made that had the wrong image scale which threw off the reticle alignment. It would appear the Astrotrac has been bitten by the same problem.

After an email exchange on April 30th, I sent off the scope to Richard Taylor at Astrotrac for inspection. He’s plead a long string of bad weather (it is the UK after all) for not being able to check out the scope, but I suspect that it is also partly a busy travel schedule for what is, after all, a small company trying to sell a nice product. He offered to simply replace the scope to get me going again, but that was delayed while he waited for a new shipment. Finally today he says it should go out in the mail. Alas, it will probably not arrive before we leave for a vacation to Missouri where I had hoped to put the Astrotrac to use. Last month we went into upstate New York with dark skies and no Astrotrac, this month it’s to Missouri with no Astrotrac, but I should have it in time for the Summer Star Pary in Massachusetts. I hope.