User manual MEADE ETX-80AT

[. . . ] Instruction Manual ETX-80AT-TC MEADE. COM CONTENTS WARNING! Never use a Meade® Telescope to look at the Sun!Looking at or near the Sun will cause instant and irreversible damage to your eye. Eye damage is often painless, so there is no warning to the observer that damage has occurred until it is too late. Do not point the telescope or its viewfinder at or near the Sun. [. . . ] While this is not always possible, the darker the site, the better. Give your eyes about ten minutes to adjust to the darkness before observing. Give your eyes a rest from observing every ten or fifteen minutes to relieve eyestrain. A lot of observers use red LED flashlights or tape red cellophane over their flashlights to use for setup and map reading so they don't have to continually readjust their eyes to the darkness. Be careful not to shine bright lights if there are other observers in the area. Do not shine a flashlight into the telescope while someone is observing!It gets chilly when you're sitting for prolonged periods. Practice setting up your equipment during the day or in a lighted area to become familiar with it before going to a dark site. Use your 25mm eyepiece to view terrestrial objects and wider areas of space, such as open star clusters. Use your 9mm eyepiece when you wish to view something up close, such as craters on the Moon or the rings of Saturn. If you're going to try out an unfamiliar site, check it out in the daylight for possible obstructions and pitfalls. Glossary Menu The Glossary menu provides an alphabetical listing of definitions and descriptions for common astronomical terms and Autostar functions. Access directly through the Glossary menu or through hypertext words embedded in Autostar. A hypertext word is any word in [brackets], usually found when using the Autostar Help function or when reading a scrolling message such as a description of a planet or star. Press ENTER whenever a hypertext word is on screen and Autostar goes to the glossary entry for that word. To access directly from the Glossary menu, use the Scroll keys to scroll through the alphabet. Scroll to the desired entry and then press ENTER to read the description. · · · · · Utilities Menu The Utilities menu provides access to several extra features within Autostar, including a countdown timer and an alarm. The Utilities functions include: · 24 Timer selects a countdown timer. This feature is useful for functions such as astrophotography and tracking satellites. To use the Timer, press ENTER, then choose "Set" or "Start/Stop. " { { Set: Enter the time to be counted down, in hours, minutes, and seconds, then press ENTER. Start/Stop: Activates the timer set previously. Use the Scroll keys to toggle between ON and OFF. When ON is displayed, press ENTER to activate the timer. [. . . ] Open Clusters are loose groupings of young stars, all recently formed from the same diffuse nebula. The Pleiades is an open cluster 410 light years away (Fig. Through the ETX-80AT, numerous stars are visible. Constellations are large, imaginary patterns of stars believed by ancient civilizations to be the celestial equivalent of objects, animals, people, or gods. [. . . ]