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Hello all:

I hope this thread hasn't died. I'm completely new to this site, not sure this is how I should post. Please let me know.

For years I thought I was the only person on the planet still trying to do positional astronomy with a theodolite; great to see there are others! I've been using a Zeiss-Jena Theo 010, which you can still find now and then on e-bay for $500 to $1000. Not all of them (I have 3) are in good condition. It has a Maksutov-type telescope, and the mirrors are often degraded. The precision, however, can be phenomenal: 0.5 to 0.3" for circle readings, roughly the same for telescope pointing on ideal targets (like stars). What are hard to find, however, are the elbow-shaped eyepieces for vertical sightings and the striding level. If anyone is interested, I have lots of information about this instrument and some ideas for improving its accuracy.

I'm now finding that I'm not sure how to get unequivocal apparent positions of stars. The planetarium program Stellarium and the USNO's MICA give values that sometimes differ by many arc seconds. I'd like to try Tinyac, but I use Linux and don't have a Windows. Any ideas?