Worse, they were made of paper, and would be used on a ship, where the dampness would wage war on the paper. The pages of the book are the results of some poor slob's life work to work out all the trigonometery for all the equations for all the locations. Its all you needed to know exactly where you are (within about 70 miles). Take these three ovservations, and consult the Ephemeris - which is a printed book listing the rising/setting of a given star for each day of the year, and for each latitude. Now, look up and you note that the star Arcturus is just setting on the horizon. You look up, and note that its 42 degrees to the north star. Say you're standing on a ship, somewhere at sea. It uses the same method of navigating that Columbus used: if you know what time it is, and you know what you're looking at, you can determine where you are. It all comes back to 12th century technology - navigation. Understanding how the GOTO works goes a long way to enjoying this scope. The manual tries to take a very casual approach to this, and it repeatedly states that its important to be generalized, not exacting, when setting up the scope. It needs some direction from the user, and that can be summed up as "point me in the right direction". The usual complaints on websites have been with the "goto" feature of this scope. Putting aside the issues already discussed, there are some really good points about the Meade Autostar.
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February 2023
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