Celestron Compustar Manual de Instruções descarregar pdf (Página 3)

able to automatically slew to any one of thousands of objects in their database. They were

produced as 8, 11, and 14-inch versions of their popular SCTs, known respectively as the

Compustar 8, Compustar 11 and Compustar 14.

Unfortunately, the Compustars did not hit the home run Celestron hoped they would within the

amateur astronomy community, largely due to their high prices. The Compustar 14, at $22,000,

still holds the record as the commercial Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope (SCT) with the highest list

price. The Compustar 8‟s list price was $6,500. Although most Compustars were sold for

considerably less (about $9,500 for the Compustar 14 and $2,700-3,500 for the Compustar 8),

they were still out of the price range of many amateur astronomers. Rather, they were later

supplanted by the Meade LX200 series of less expensive Go-To telescopes, largely because

Meade purchased ATI and had Mr. Simmons put his efforts into producing the LX200 series.

Celestron didn‟t counter the LX200 with its own Ultima 2000 series until much later, in the late

1990s (hence, the 2000 name, taking advantage of the “millennium fever” of the time). Celestron

phased out the Compustars by in the early 1990s and no longer supports them.

The Compustars‟ other problem was that they were simply ahead of their time. The Compustars

were unprecedented in their abilities and there are many among the community of amateur

astronomers who think that they have yet to be surpassed as a Go-To telescope. A Compustar

slews faster than other telescopes, up to an amazing 10 degrees per second. Its large, 7”x9”

computer module screen is capable of simultaneously displaying much more data than any of the

small hand controllers of the newer Go-To telescopes. A Compustar can simultaneously display

the coordinates of the scope, the object number in the NGC and/or Messier catalogs, the type of

object, it‟s magnitude, its size, double stars and their separations, how many other catalog objects

are within a certain distance of the object, whether the object is in Sky Atlas 2000, and a visual

rating of the object on a 10 point scale. It is also capable of being programmed for tours of the

sky. Want to see all the galaxies that are more than 30 degrees above the horizon, brighter than

magnitude 12, rated better than 5 points, and look at each object for 3 minutes? No problem!

Just punch in a few keystrokes and the Compustar will take you on that tour. Although there

have been criticisms that the pointing accuracy of the Compustars is not very good, this is not

completely true. Permanently mounted Compustars with accurate polar alignments have very

good pointing accuracy indeed.

Another criticism is that they were only programmed to work through the year 1999, and were

not “Y2K” compliant. This is also no longer a problem. Tom Sorbel, of StarChron Solutions

(P.O. Box 47143, Plymouth, MN 55447-0143), has made Y2K chips available that will update

the Compustars well into the next century. He has even recently released a set of Y2K+ chips

that significantly update the NGC catalog (called the CNGC for Compustar NGC) and reference

star catalog with additional objects. Note that the Compustar 11 and 14 have a different chip than

the Compustar 8.

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