Tag Archives: discovery 8 eq

Lin-Optics Equatorial Mount Maintenance Project

Lin equatorial mount disassembled for lubrication replacement.

My Discovery 8 EQ‘s equatorial mount is over 10 years old and it has been very ‘sticky’. It is a ‘Lin-Optics’ brand-name mount that I cannot find of any documentation on the web. Last week, I attempted to disassemble it to replace the lubrication but could not figure out how to remove the inner shafts.

This weekend, I finally had more time to look into the issue further. I needed a little bit more time to carefully figure out which set screws were meant to be removed, and which were meant to be tightened down in order to remove the shafts. It was like a rubik’s cube puzzle.

After an hour, I finally figured it out. The ascension shaft took me half as much time to figure out. I cleaned the parts with degreaser spray and wiped them clean with paper towels. If I could have collected the metal filings, I would say there was about a teaspoon of it. I then applied a generous amount of white lithium grease and put it back together.

Now, my mount is buttery smooth with the Newtonian telescope on it. It feels like I just bought myself a new mount. A fun project with long-lasting benefits.

My Second Night Out with my Discovery 8 EQ

My Discovery 8 EQ

I’m a newbie amateur astronomer from Oshawa, ON (Canada). Tonight, I setup my Discovery 8″ EQ reflector in the middle of an open field in my neighbourhood 200 feet away from the nearest street light. I also used this chance to align my finder. With my limited knowledge of the skies, I was able to observe:

Venus: It was so close to the rooftops by the time I was ready to view it. It was so small and so bright that it was hard to see the disk. It seemed like it was better through my refractor.

Saturn: It was bigger than Venus and sharper in medium magnification. It seemed the same through my refractor. At higher magnification, it got blurry that I thought there was dust in my eyepiece so I took it out and blew at both sides of the lens. Bad newbie move. It fogged up.

Moon: This was the first time I looked at the moon through a telescope ever, and my first reaction was saying “holy f***” in the middle of the field. As I continued to increase the magnification using different eyepieces, I was amazed at the detail. I saw a crater in the middle of a crater! I began to wonder how big these craters were and how could meteors hit the near side of the moon yet missing Earth! I began to wonder how the dark side might be even worse! Then within 3 minutes, my eye began to hurt, so I put on the tube cover and removed the 2 small hole covers to reduce the intensity, but it didn’t help much.

Then I scanned the summer triangle, looking for the one that is supposed to be a double star. I couldn’t find it.

In total, it was 20 mins for setup and tear down, and an hour of observing. I’m loving this new hobby. Now if I can find someone else in my neighbourhood with experience to join me in darker skies, that would be even better so that I don’t look like a creep in the middle of our field. Signing out!