everyone I'm Ken where the Ryan telescopes and this is a basic tutorial on some tips on how to use the star blast 4.5 EQ I'm going to assume you already have it set up you've got it looking like this out of the box using the instruction manuals for Seto there's two things you need to do before you start using the telescope and that's balance the scope itself with the counterweights and then align the finder scope so first off in order to move the telescope by hand you've got to unlock the axes there's a knob here which adjusts this direction this is east to west and then north and south along this axis the declination so declination and right ascension this is the way you move the scope of the sky to find different objects you first want to move the scope off to the side let's do it like this and you just kind of let go for a second and see if it's a little out of balance I'm gonna pretend it's out of balance by shifting the counterweight up so now it's obviously scope heavy the counterweight is not acting enough to to balance it out simply slide the counterweight back try it again until the scope stays put on its own that's balanced in this direction for the other direction north and south declination you can move the telescope back and forth in the Rings themselves just loosen the little lock knobs here slide the scope forward and backwards until it's balanced the next step is the finder scope if the finder is not aligned you will never be able to find anything in the sky it's very difficult to look through the the eyepiece which is a relatively narrow field of view compared to naked eye and find anything so the first time you use this you have to do it the hard way you've got to find something without the finder scope because if you just screw this thing on it's not aligned to the view of the main telescope it's slightly off so I like to do it during the day just look out in the distance find a tree or a power pole that's at least a quarter-mile away something as far away as you can and loosen the axes find it with the main scope through your 17 millimeter your low power eyepiece lock the two axes down if you need to fine-tune the position to Center the corner of the building or the tree or whatever in the main scope do it with a slow motion no okay so now you've got the corner of the tree set right in the middle of the IPS now look through your finder scope here and you'll see the dot but it probably is not on the exact same thing we'll just simply use the two screws on the side and the back of the finder to make sure the dot is overlapping with what you see in the center of this field once that's done once that's done then you know your finder is aligned and you can use it to find things in the sky before you do your initial polar aligning you need to make sure that the mount itself is pretty level just eyeball it it doesn't have to be dead-on accurate but get the tripod legs roughly even if you're on a hill then obviously you have to raise or lower one leg so that the top of the mountain is level what that's going to do is when it comes time to do the polar lining and you need to look at that latitude scale the latitude scale will be accurate for your location as long as the mouth is level the equatorial mount needs to be polar aligned to the night sky in order for it to move in the proper directions using those slow motion knobs there's an altitude that's this axis right here this has to point towards Polaris and the height of that corresponds to your latitude so here in San Jose I know we're 37 degrees north latitude so I'm gonna look on the side of this there's a little scale that goes from 0 to 90 on the break bottom opposite side of this I'm gonna lose something that axis and then with this knob right here I'm gonna raise or lower it until I get 37 degrees right over the arrow once I've done that I lock it down then the left and right direction I've got to be pointed right at Bellaire so I'm just gonna pretend Polaris is right there I know the height is right because I've done 37 degrees and you can loosen the mount on the side and pivot it this way until Polaris is right in line with the north-south axis here so what that means is if I was to draw an imaginary line up this axis right here it would point right at Polaris that's the way you need to leave them out lock it back down so now when I loosen the knobs that I showed you earlier and I move the telescope around when I move this around notice I'm looking to the south I'm looking to the north here but all the while this axis still stays pointing at Polaris that always has to be there otherwise the scope won't track what that means is let's say Jupiter's right over here so I'm gonna move the scope did you put her lock it down maybe fine-tune the positioning of Dupree using the finder scope and the slow motion knobs but I've got Jupiter in the view here the Earth's moving that our throat ating so you'll quickly notice that Jupiter will start to float out of the field of view as long as you're polar lined and this is pointed towards Polaris all I have to do is twist the one knob that spins the telescope in this east-west direction and it will follow Jupiter as it moves in the sky if I'm not correctly aligned and let's say I'm this axis is pointed to the west then I'm gonna have to move both knobs and random directions in order to keep things centered so polar aligning just makes it a lot easier to track things with the equatorial mount as you're following along in high-power now the scope comes with two eyepieces a 17 millimeter here and then also a 6 millimeter now it's sort of the opposite of what you think the higher the number on the IPS the lower the power so you always want to start with your lowest power because that gives you the widest field of view in the sky and that makes it easy to find things so always use your 17 millimeter first but gives you 26 power and a nice decently wide field of view when it comes time to zoom in you can then pop in the six millimeter eyepiece which gives you 75 power and you're cropping in and making things bigger so let's say you wanted to look at Jupiter you've got your finder scope aligned you're tracking well because the equatorial mount is aligned pop your 17 millimeter and unlock the axes here let's see Jupiter is right over there so I'm gonna eyeball it get the tube roughly in the right orientation then I'll look through the finder scope and fine-tune it by getting the dot right on Jupiter then I'll lock it down and then I look through my 17 millimeter IPS and as long as my finderscope is decently aligned it should be somewhere in the field of view I mean they'll be centered but that's what the slow motion knobs are for so I'll adjust that until I get Jupiter centered that's pretty low power twenty six powers not quite enough to see detail on the surface of Jupiter you'll easily be able to see the moons around Jupiter at that power but now it's time to zoom in and see an even closer look so I take the 17 out as long as it's roughly centered put the six end and then just refocus with a knob here until you get a nice sharp image and now you've got a closer up view at 75 magnification to look at the cloud viens on Jupiter if you're wondering what the next step is to enhance the view I can suggest a couple of accessories that will give you a nicer view of the night sky the first thing that I think everybody should get is a bottle lens it doubles the power of whatever eyepiece you use with it so let's say you started with that 17 millimeter you're looking at Jupiter it wasn't enough power so you pop in the six millimeter and you get a nice big view of it or you can go even further the scope is capable of doing at least double that magnification so with the barlow you pull out your eyepiece cookies into the barlow and then the whole assembly goes back into the telescope lock it down refocus and now you've just doubled the power so 75 has become 150 power so even more details on the rings of Saturn cloud belts on Jupiter if you look at the moon that will really zoom you into the individual craters speaking of the moon if you're looking at the moon and you find this a little bright because the moon is obviously the brightest thing in the night sky and a four knife inch reflector can suck on a lot of light it's not going to damage your eyes but it's like going outside on a sunny day without sunglasses it's not very comfortable so we have a moon filter very simple accessory it just threads in to the bottom of any of your eyepieces and cuts down the brightness so now you have a more pleasing view of the moon's surface and the contrast seems to go up because your eyes aren't washed out with so much light all right well there you have it there are some basic tips on how to use the star blast 4.5 equatorial mount please read the manual in full I give you the kind of general overview but the manual will really explain each individual part and piece and how it works very well so definitely familiarize yourself with that and then just with a little practice and experience out under the night sky you will really enjoy your scope and see all sorts of wonderful things on the night sky alright thank you very much clear skies you