Uncle Rod's Astro Blog

Criticism? Meade shoulda hired Lindsay Lohan for this video rather than using Scott Roberts. He's a nice enough fella, and does a pretty good job with his talks at star parties. But stage presence and charisma? Naw...sorry! 

OK, so you’ve got a little PDA-like color computer screen. That would seem to open up possibilities. But how do you point the consarned thing with no peep hole to look through? Easy, Meade’s little pistol has sights. Fore and aft “hard sights” just like the old S&W .38 “Combat Masterpiece” Uncle Rod had to wear at the missile complexes when their were visitors onsite. The Meade's sites light up red to help you aim out in the dark. This sounds both useable and practical to me, though we’ll have to wait to see how this works out under the night sky, natch.

The other part of the MySky coolness? It appears that when you’re identifying and searching for objects the screen doesn’t just display some ho-hum pointer arrows. It actually shows a color depiction of the sky with constellation lines and all, just like the planetarium program on your PC. Like them dudes say on WTBS late at night, though, BUT THAT’S NOT ALL! Like some of the more advanced planetarium programs, the MySky appears to be possessed of images of some DSOs. This sounds much more like a genu-wine personal planetarium than just a star finder.

Problems? Other than the usual, “Can Meade deliver this thing on time and in working order”? Not many I can think of. Oh, some of the gang over yonder on SCT User expressed fears that the MySky would result in countless amateur astronomer deaths at the hands of police: “Hey what you boys doing out here in the dark? DROP YOUR WEAPON!” BOOM! Luckily, that doesn’t sound likely to me. Oh, I think you should use discretion, sure. If approached by police at your observing site, don’t point your MySky (or cellphone or telescope) at ‘em. But I hardly think this is gonna result in an amateur astronomer Armageddon.

Oh, there was one other “problem” when it came to the MySky, I thought, the same put-on-the-brakes dose of reality I got after thinking about buying the SkyScout. What the heck do you do with the thing other than point out a few objects to students or allow them to do so for themselves (a SkyScout equipped with a green laser would be a very nice tool for that, I’ll admit)? What else can an amateur do with this thing to make it worth 400 Georgie Washingtons?

With the SkyScout, the answer is “not much.” It is what it is. But down near the end of the list of MySky features was the information that the MySky can be connected to your Autostar-equipped Meade scope. And not just to allow you to use the gadget’s onboard GPS receiver during scope alignment for your non-GPS Meade. It’s like this: point the MySky at your object of choice. Pull the trigger. Your scope goes there. To make this practical, MySky has an onboard library of 30,000 objects (stored on an included SD card) vice 6,000 (mostly stars) on the SkyScout.

The idea of that tickles me. Especially when I think about doing this in conjunction with my ETX125. Sometimes, you see, I want more than just an Autostar hand controller with its many-button-push approach to object go-to. I could use a laptop PC, but dragging out a laptop seems to abrogate the very reason I bought the little guy: GRAB ‘N GO simplicity. With a MySky I could leave the PC (and piles of books) at home.

The only criticism I have regarding MySky’s scope control possibilities? Meade should get over themselves and make all their programs and computer doohickeys ASCOM capable. Yeah, that means somebody might use one of their products with a NON MEADE scope, but think how many more gizmos they could sell. Seems like a no-brainer to me. Sigh.

Will I run out and buy a MySky? Do I look like I just fell off the turnip truck? With Meade (and Celestron, too), it usually pays to sit out the lemming rush of early adopters. But if it pans out, and Celestron don’t hook me with a SUPER SKY SCOUT, I might. I just might.

2020 Update

The MySky and SkyScout have been dead lo these many years. What killed em?

The MySky's biggest problem was the bungling of the Meade of this era. They just couldn't deliver a product that worked out of the box and continued to work. And the quality of the MySky was horrible. I knew a couple of people who sat them on the observing table balanced on their handles, and had them tip over and immediately stop working after a fall of 3-inches. Also, while cute, the video screen's resolution was too low. Even in these long ago days people were beginning to carry around cell phones with better color screens than this little thing had.

What really killed the star finders, though? Uncle Rod found himself with a few spare bucks to  his name and decided the SkyScout might be just the thing to use with his university astronomy students. One night with the class when we were outside with the telescopes, I proudly pulled out the SkyScout, pointed it at a star and the thing annouced "Rigel." One of my students then pulled out his smart phone, announced, "I can do that too," pointed his phone in the same direction and did the same thing. And did it with a high resolution star chart. That night I put my SkyScout in the closet where it has remained.