Star Gazing on the Park

Galileo Visions Telescopes - A Detailed Look (continued)

Positioning System
Once the scope was securely mounted to the tripod and balanced, I then began my investigation of the positioning system. The positioning systems for these scopes were straight forward and very easy to use, even for beginners. The concept was based on a Dobsonian Mount where the tube assembly had two degrees of freedom (azimuth and elevation), both of which can be manipulated manually. And by manually, I mean, tiny nudges or complete full motion for rapid positioning. The friction for both the azimuth and elevation were closely matched which made it easier to position. The positioning system even included friction based controls which helped in "slowing down" the scope. It basically increased the friction so that the tiny nudges only make the scope move a tiny bit. This was especially useful with higher magnification where the apparent view is significantly reduced. While this type of manual positioning system may not have lent itself to the adamant CCTV buff, it did provide a very easy to use, flexible, point anywhere method that is most enjoyable. I thought of the times with my home made telescope, (which had a true Dobsonian mount) where I would hunt for deep sky objects. You see, without the motor driven mount, it required a bit more "skill" to find some of these objects. Finding a known star, and using some basic geometry made it possible to find anything bright enough for the aperture you were viewing with. Nothing was more rewarding then hunting to find M56 and M57 two very cool globular clusters, and using just the CIR bulls-eye and at least some knowledge on where to point.

Lost are those days where the world now clicks a button, and points to anything they desire. Who needs aperture when you could boost up and down the gain on your CCTV? Well, some of us remember the rural days and find great reward in hunting down the objects on our own.

Pointing System
The FS-135DX came with a CIR electronic finder which was a tremendous asset to a Dobsonian system positioning system. It was a smaller, less sophisticated version of a Telrad but considering I paid almost $50 for my Telrad 10 years ago, and this entire scope with everything including an electronic finder was only $290, what can I complain about? Nothing. The CIR was very similar in performance to my Telrad with a few minor notes. The adjustments used to boresight it with the eyepiece and view, was a bit rugged and harder to move. Also, it did provide a dimmer, but the dimmer didn't dim as refined as my Telrad. Instead, it went from bright, to slightly less bright, to off. But again, considering my Telrad was 1/5 of the overall price of this entire Galileo Telescope, I had no gripes to make.

The FS-102DX didn't come with a CIR, which again, when considering its price of under $200, I could appreciate not having this feature.  But I was a bit under whelmed with the rudimentary riffle style pointer that only allowed me to look down a dark barrel to aim.  It's probably best to just use the edge of the scope when hunting for deep sky objects and use a low powered 20mm eyepiece with a large field of view to hone in on them.

Secondary Mirror Mount
The secondary mirror mount impressed me especially when I considering a telescope in this price range. The mount was entirely metal, and had three adjustable screws for easy and accurate alignment. Before diving into using the scope at night, I made sure to verify the alignment of the mirrors. To do this accurately, I used my home-made laser pointing system which mounts directly into the eyepiece holder. When viewing the end of the telescope as the laser is on, it's possible to determine if the secondary is pointing correctly. It was as simple as looking for the red laser light pointing at the black dot found in the center of the primary mirror, which Galileo Telescopes was smart enough to provide. The secondary mirror did need a very minor tweak in one axis to align the laser to the center of the primary which very well may have become unaligned during shipping.

Primary Mirror
I was extremely shocked to find that the primary mirror was in exact alignment with the scope, eyepiece and after tweaking the secondary, it as well. Like most of the scope, the mount was also metal, not paper board, or wood. I also noticed that the primary mirror mount was well vented with large diameter holes. These holes help the primary mirror stabilize in temperature with the tube and the rest of the scope, thereby reducing condensation, or distortion of the mirror.

Once again using my trusty laser alignment tool, I quickly took note that no adjustments were necessary on the primary. But since I was trying to do an in depth review of the scope, I thought I'd give the primary a tweak just to see how adjustable it was. The adjustment screws on the mirror mount we extremely tight and difficult to turn, which is a small price to pay considering the primary was well aligned after shipping. But with patience, movement and adjustment is possible. It is likely a two man procedure as someone should be looking down the scope during the adjustments to verify alignment.

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