User manual ORION TELESCOPES & BINOCULARS AV6EQ

[. . . ] INSTRUCTION MANUAL Orion AstroViewTM 6 EQ ® #9827 Equatorial Reflecting Telescope Customer Support (800) 676-1343 E-mail: support@telescope. com Corporate Offices (831) 763-7000 Providing Exceptional Consumer Optical Products Since 1975 P. O. Box 1815, Santa Cruz, CA 95061 IN 160 Rev. A 03/02 Finder scope Finder scope bracket Eyepiece Focus knob Tube rings Optical tube Declination slow motion control Declination lock lever Counterweight shaft Large counterweight Small counterweight "Toe Saver" Right ascension lock lever Counterweight lock knobs Polar axis finder (covered) Latitude scale Tripod leg Latitude adjustment T-bolts Right ascension slow-motion control Accessory tray bracket Accessory tray Leg lock knob Figure 1. The AstroView 6 EQ 2 Welcome to the exciting world of amateur astronomy! [. . . ] The counterweight shaft is still horizontal. What if you need to aim the telescope directly north, but at an object that is nearer to the horizon than Polaris?You can't do it with the counterweight down as pictured in Figure 1. Again, you have to rotate the scope in R. A. so that the counterweight shaft is positioned horizontally. so it points to where you want it near the horizon. To point the telescope directly south, the counterweight shaft should again be horizontal. Then you simply rotate the scope on the Dec. axis until it points in the south direction. To point the telescope to the east or west, or in other directions, you rotate the telescope on its R. A. Depending on the altitude of the object you want to observe, the counterweight shaft will be oriented somewhere between vertical and horizontal. Figure 9 illustrates how the telescope will look when pointed at the four cardinal directions: north, south, east and west. The key things to remember when pointing the telescope are that a) you only move it in R. A. and Dec. , not in azimuth or latitude (altitude), and b) the counterweight and shaft will not always appear as it does in Figure 1. In fact it almost never will! Note that the tripod and mount have not been moved; only the telescope tube has move on the R. A. axis. of the primary mirror, as in Figure 10a. If anything is off-center, as in Figure 10b, proceed with the following collimation procedure. The Collimation Cap and Mirror Center Mark Your AstroView 6 EQ comes with a collimation cap. This is a simple cap that fits on the focuser drawtube like a dust cap, but has a hole in the center and a silver bottom. This helps center your eye so that collimation is easy to perform. Figures 10b through 10e assume you have the collimation cap in place. In addition to the collimation cap, the primary mirror is marked with a circle at its exact center. [. . . ] Handle the mirror by its holder; do not touch the mirror surface. Then follow the same procedure described below for cleaning the primary mirror. To clean the primary mirror, carefully remove the mirror cell from the telescope. For the AstroView 6 EQ, this means you must loosen the four screws on the side of the tube near the primary mirror. [. . . ]