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  • Latest Posts

    • I am relatively new to the hobby and hope the below may be of some use to those sitting on the fence and trying to decide whether to get stuck in - or potentially stuck out if your daughters forget you are outside and lock up the house. After months of research I finally decided on buying the Celestron 5dx SCT telescope. I could say it was because I mainly wanted to see the planets or possibly because it was compact enough that I could keep it in the corner of the living room, but if the truth be known it was on a special offer and had 5 months interest free credit.  Any way for good or bad my telescope arrived and it has been out every clear night that I wasn’t down the pub and having had it 5 months now I can give a little insight for those like me who were a bit stuck. First and foremost I have discovered that having any telescope at all is much much more fun than not having one. My small 5 inch SCT is giving so much joy to me and a surprisingly large number of unexpected guests. I live in the middle of a town with pretty bad viewing conditions and limited area of sky available from a small back garden, but even so it is such a great, and slightly smug, feeling to see friends, relatives and random neighbours being astounded at their first views of The Moon, Saturn and Jupiter. Some have even got hooked and bought cheap department store telescopes which are actually much better than expected once they changed the eyepieces.  After a few weeks the spendits hit for me and I started to look at better eyepieces. The 26mm that came with the scope is pretty good but the 10mm was rubbish. Again after a huge amount of looking there appeared a deal on a Celestron zoom eyepiece. It was an accidental purchase but so pleased I did it as it has been used every night and I just love the simplicity of it. Stick it in, find your target and zoom in until you get a pretty decent view. Then show off a bit! I have obviously invested in eyepieces that are better and a good show stopper is the Luminos 7mm if only because it is the size of a small hand grenade but the good ol zoom is just great for a simpleton like me who loves to see the moon and planets - it is just a joy to use. You will be pleased to know my final observation is about taking some videos and photos to share with those fortunate enough to be able to avoid coming round. I bought a second hand DSLR camera and T ring adapter and spent many nights trying to work out the settings to get anything remotely resembling what I could see. Eventually I got bored - for me it took away all the joy of just seeing the planets. The camera is now a fairly nice ornament. Then one weekend my daughters turned up with a 3 axis iPhone holder and bingo! Within half an hour we had worked out how to reduce the phone camera exposure and were sending videos of a ‘Lunar fly by’ and a fairly good video of Jupiter and it’s moons. We even accidentally got a video of a strange shooting sometime that went straight through the middle of Jupiter. This has sparked numerous discussions about aliens and potentially a conspiracy to blow up Jupiter for cosmetic reasons. And that is it  if I were to do it again I would definitely get a small SCT again but I am sure everyone would say that about their first telescope. I have just loved how easy it is to take outside in minutes and start being astounded! I wouldn’t bother with the StarSense or motorised mount as I haven’t used it at all. For me part of the joy has been actually finding things and once you get to know a few bits you can show off a bit when sitting outside the pub. i would certainly get a decent zoom eyepiece and the 3 axis phone holder then just sit back enjoy and be thankful that someone decided to invent the telescope! IMG_8440.mov        
    • I think the 10" classical Cassegrain would look great in an observatory.
    • The latest BBC Weather Forecast is now indicating cloudy skies in Mexico on 8 April, and rain showers in Texas, ironically the best chance of clear skies now appears to be in the Great Lakes area, but all that could change. John 
    • Googling LX90 PC control provides a lot of information.  It seems that you can use a serial cable between the handset and a PC, with the handset connected to the mount so it relays the commands.  As most modern PCs won't have a true serial port you will need a USB to true RS232 serial adapter.  On some of the links to other forums there was suggestion of a 505 cable, which might be a propriety cable with the adapter built in.  As the cable is using standard serial it can be long enough to have the scope outside and control it from the comfort of your lounge.  However the problem you will run into is with other equipment such as cameras, which will all be USB and anything over 3m ideally requires an active cable to boost the signals.  Personally I would not advise using anything over 5m..  Most remotely operated  setups tend to keep everything local to the mount, including a computer of some kind.  Then you simply use wi-fi or a long cat5/6 cable between the two PCs and remote desktop into the PC at the scope.
    • As we're dreaming, I'd love to have my FS152 gifted back please! When I foolishly let it go it was mounted on a Losmandy G11 and not the EQ6 in the pic, but even the tube assembly alone would be a dream come true. Sadly, dreams like this don't come true! 😔  
  • Recent Topics

  • Recent Status Updates

    • andre2  »  Zakalwe

      Hi, zakalwe .  How about the  proms with Lunt 60 and The DS 50 etalon? Assume they look better with single etalon?  Thanks.    Miertje. 
      · 0 replies
    • Earl

      grey wet and hail....
      · 0 replies
    • Hawksmoor

      The sky has ben briefly clear for a change so captured some data. A spectrum from the carbon star La Superba and some video clips of the Full Moon. The Lunar data gave me the opportunity to try James Ritson's latest lunar disc macro for AFFP02 which was in his last update. Excellent for high definition, even when using my mini rig and 66mm Altair Lightwave scope. Have put image of Full Moon in my Moon Album. Still working on processing the spectrum.🧐
      · 0 replies
    • Earl

      Grey and wet, how suprisng.....
      · 0 replies
    • Earl

      64GB CF card arrived. only had a 512mb with the camera with the space for 30 photos LOL. 350 photos took up 30GB Raw and JPG max res... thats better!
      · 0 replies
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