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Old March 21st 16, 09:02 AM posted to sci.astro.amateur
oriel36[_2_]
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Default Anyone Using an A-P Mount and TheSkyX?

The point of view is that magnification is dominated by celestial sphere enthusiasts rather than cultists which,I suppose, is good news for fidgety guys taking their telescopes out at night. It is far below geocentricity by virtue that a rotating celestial sphere is imposed on the Earth's rotation hence these Equatorial mounts create their own homocentric axis despite the prevailing notion that the Earth rotation scales up to a rotating celestial sphere -

"In astronomical telescope mounts, the equatorial axis (the right ascension) is paired with a second perpendicular axis of motion (known as the declination). The equatorial axis of the mount is often equipped with a motorized "clock drive", that rotates that axis one revolution every 23 hours and 56 minutes in exact sync with the apparent diurnal motion of the sky" Wikipedia article on Equatorial mounts

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equato...uatorial_mount

The underlying issue is keeping the magnification hobbyists happy with their calendar based RA/Dec framework while forcibly breaking their addiction to celestial sphere ideologies which is hollowing out astronomy where the connections between planetary motions and terrestrial sciences are involved.

The antidote for a celestial sphere addiction is to appreciate how the orbital motion of the Earth creates the line-of-sight disappearance and re-appearance of the stars behind the central Sun as we move around the Sun and how this observation looks like from the surface of the Earth -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeQwYrfmvoQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdFrE7hWj0A

Imagine the Earth as a spacecraft if necessary travelling through space as anything is better than dumping everything into a rotating celestial sphere cistern.