Do You Wear Eyeglasses?, Focusing the Telescope

Altitude

Azimuth

Figure 4. The StarBlast has two axes of motion: altitude (up/down) and azimuth (left/right).

Do You Wear Eyeglasses?

If you wear eyeglasses, you may be able to keep them on while you observe. In order to do this, your eyepiece must have enough “eye relief” to allow you to see the entire field of view with glasses on. You can try looking through the eyepiece first with your glasses on and then with them off, to see if the glasses restrict the view to only a portion of the full field. If the glasses do restrict the field of view, you may be able to observe with your glasses off by just refo- cusing the telescope to your unaided vision.

If your eyes are astigmatic, images will probably appear best with glasses on. This is because a telescope’s focuser can accommodate for nearsightedness or far- sightedness, but not astigmatism. If you have to wear your

	glasses	while	observing
Short	and	cannot	see the
Short	entire field of view, you
eye relief	entire field of view, you
restricts	may want to purchase
the field	additional		eyepieces
of view	that have longer eye
for	that have longer eye
for		relief.
eyeglass		relief.

wearers.

Long eye relief allows full field

of view to be seen with or without eyeglasses.

Figure 5. Try grasping the telescope as shown for easiest pointing. One hand moves the telescope from the front of the tube while the other hand remains on the handle to keep the telescope steady.

Focusing the Telescope

With the 17mm Kellner eyepiece (1) inserted into the focuser (4) and secured with the thumbscrews, aim the opti- cal tube (3) so the front (open) end is pointing in the general direction of an object at least 1/4-mile away. With your fingers, slowly rotate one of the focus wheels (15) until the object comes into sharp focus. Go a little bit beyond sharp focus until the image starts to blur again, then reverse the rotation of the knob, just to make sure you’ve hit the exact focus point.

Operating the EZ Finder II reflex finder

The EZ Finder II reflex finder (2) (Figure 6) works by project- ing a tiny red dot onto a lens mounted in the front of the unit. When you look through the EZ Finder II, the red dot will appear to float in space. The red dot is produced by a light- emitting diode (LED), not a laser beam, near the rear of the sight. A replaceable 3-volt lithium battery provides the power for the diode.

Azimuth adjustment Knob

Power Knob