You must remember to switch off the illuminator when not in
use to avoid draining the battery.
Alignment & Use:
1) Thread
Illuminator
into Starbeam. Compression of the rubber O-ring allows convenient positioning of the
Blink Adjustment Knob
.
2) Turn on
Illuminator
by rotating the black knob on the end clockwise. Continuing to rotate the knob clockwise increases the brightness.
Adjust the intensity of the illuminator so the red-star appears comfortably bright without disturbing your night vision.
Rotate the white
Blink Adjustment Knob
on the side of the housing to adjust the pulse rate of the LED. Rotate the knob fully clockwise
for continuous on.
3) At 50x to 100x, place a star in the middle of your telescope field.
4) To view through the Starbeam locate your eye above the
Illuminator
and a foot or two back from the beamsplitter. Even though
you can be further back or off to the side a little and still see the "red-star," it is easiest to first see the dot in this straight through position.
While viewing through Starbeam, use the horizontal and vertical adjustment screws to overlay the "red-star" onto a test star in the sky. That's
it!
To raise or lower Starbeam, loosen the
Lock Screw
and turn the
Vertical Adjustment Screw
. Starbeam will pivot vertically on the
Horizontal Adjustment Screws
. The
Lock Screw
works "against" the
Vertical Adjustment Screw
to lock the assembly. It is only
necessary to lightly snug the
Optical Assembly Support Bar
against the
Lock Screw
. Tightening it too much will interfere with horizontal
movement.
The
Horizontal Adjustment Screws
are meant to work against each other. Loosening one
Horizontal Adjustment Screw
while
tightening the other moves Starbeam smoothly in the horizontal plane. The
Lock Screw
acts as a pivot for this horizontal adjustment. The
movements sound complicated but in practice are easy to do.
Once aligned to your scope and locked, Starbeam should not need further adjustment. Incidentally, Starbeam is prefocused (collimated)
and designed so that little image shift is visible between a real star seen through the
Beamsplitter Mirror/Lens
and the projected "red-star"
overlaying it.
To use the
Flip-Mirror
, simply tilt it back until you can see the reflection of the
Beamsplitter Mirror/Lens
in the
Flip Mirror
as the diagram
below illustrates.
Care:
Although Starbeam has a durable anti-reflection coating on the convex outside (sky side) surface, if dew occurs, it's best to use a dew-
zapper or hair dryer gun to warm the dew away.
There is no coating on the inside (concave) surface of the mirror lens so cleaning is especially easy.
Starbeam is made of precision CNC machined aluminum, black-anodized for a lifetime of field use and needs no special care to maintain
its fine finish.
When it is time to replace the battery, use a Duracel XL DL 1/3N lithium or equivalent battery. To install, pull the white
Blink Adjustment
Knob
out from the side of the
Illuminator.
Gently pull out the electronic assembly by holding the
ON/OFF Brightness Control Knob
. Take
note of the polarity of the battery. The negative (-) side is toward the LED. Insert the new battery into the receptacle in the same orientation
as the old one.
Installing the battery with the polarity reversed will damage the circuitry and void the warranty.
Remove the anti-
rattle foam from the old battery and press it on to the new battery. Compress the foam and slide the electronic assembly into the Illuminator
housing. You may have to rotate the circuit board to get the LED to slip into the hole in the front end and also to align blink potentiometer
with the hole in the housing. Insert the white
Blink Adjustment Knob
through the side of the body and into the hole on the potentiometer.
Starbeam helps you find your celestial favorites quickly and easily with any scope. We wish you years of pleasure with it.
