steviebee

Welcome to SGL. l have the 6SE (along with 3 others, can you have too many scopes?) which l bought for myself as a retirement present to me. lt's a good scope and gets more use than the other 3. Lots of good advice already given above. Enjoy your new scope and enjoy your new hobby something that both you and your son can do together. 

Found this in UK and under £2.

12 hours ago, Malc Spring said:

Here is my flatmate. A Mexican Red Knee Tarantula.

Hi Fliss welcome to SGL. 

Yes definitely need pictures of Fliss🕷️. l want a jumping spider but my daughter is terrified of them so not an option lol. 

Welcome back to SGL.

22 minutes ago, happy-kat said:

Good spot I've edited my post as I'd miss read the OPs post

Easy mistake to make. 

8 minutes ago, happy-kat said:

It's great you can see opportunity to use what you already have to get going. There's a good thread on that mount here. 

https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/387014-skywatcher-az-gti-mount-owners-thread

You don't mention post processing what's been captured.

I could not see a guide telescope mentioned to go with the ASI120MM

If looking to touch as little as possible there's the interesting looking ZWO seestar50 (not yet fully launched I don't think)

 I think you will find the Star Adventurer GTi is a different mount to the AZ GTI. I have the SA GTi it's a lovely little mount and full goto. 

Good morning everyone. ls anyone using Binoviewers on the CPC800? Any help and advice much appreciated. Budget about £400. l know l will have to buy a 'matched' pair of eyepieces and any recommendations as to a cheapish pair to start with. Thank you in advance for any relies.

Welcome back to SGL. Also a Francofile and as you say properties over there can be as cheap as chips, and the clear skies.  Also enjoying my Astro with what l have.

S

Welcome to SGL from another Kent resident.

Welcome to the UK and SGL from North Kent.

There are a few astronomy clubs in the south east. Pop along to one of these you will get lots of helpful advice and possibly even a chance to look through a few Telescopes.

Hi Skyline

I have just set up my 62ED for the first time proper. The only way l can get it to balance is by removing the bottom locking thumbscrew so l can get the dovetsil far enoughback. Do you know if anyone makes the 10mm riser as not really happy using the scope without that bottom thumbscrew.

Regards.

Steve.

Welcome to SGL. I have and have had several different types of scope. The Startravel 102 is the one lm hanging onto. 

Welcome from Northfleet (Kent)

Hi and welcome to SGL from Gravesend.

Thanks Mark much appreciated.  So the one l have is a tad heavier than yours. l will get my grinder out and cut it in half lol. 

On 24/08/2022 at 13:54, Astroscot2 said:

I purchased the SW SA Gti with the tripod combo a number of weeks back. The Intention is  to pull together a portable rig to visit dark skies and work in conjunction with my ZWO camera and ASI air plus which I've also never used until last night. 

My first impressions on mounting the mount head on the tripod were not great, with the small refractor mounted it did not seem very stable, anyway I pushed on and cabled everything up. Total wt of the OTA and camera etc is around 4 kgs,  1kg under the recommended 5 kg wt limit. With the supplied counterweight all the way to the end of the CW shift I would not balance the rig. Thankfully I had a few small SW counterweights around to balance. 

So after a bit of a phaff with jumping between the home, mount and ASI air wifi I got everything connected.  So Last night was a quick trial, I had a 40 min clear spell.  Polar alignment was easy with the ASI, mount adjustments in RA & DEC are nice and smooth. Once I figured how to set my home point I slewed to various targets all of which were dead centre. BTW this mount is quite noisy slewing in the dead of night.  Onto guiding, this was the biggest surprise, RMS sat between 0.6 - 0.85 the whole time.

I noted a few issues one of which was the polar illuminator, when I Initially set up the mount I wanted to eyeball and centre the pole star prior to ASi polar alignment . With the polar illuminator turned to the lowest setting it was still too bright to see sny stars. I had to turn it off to see any stars.  Will look at this next clear night.

So picture of rig below. Still so cable manage but I think this is going to be a great portable set up.

 

Hi Astroscot2 l noticed you are using an extra balance weight on your set up. Could you let me know what weight it is as l have one from my EQ3 which is a tad over 7lb and before l chop it down to give about 3lb extra weight as per the extra iOptron weights that are being used to balance. Nice set up by the way.

Thanks jiggy 67. Yep its the right one and l found one in my odds n sods bag. 

Looking at getting the shutter release cable for my Canon 650D to this mount. ls the Canon RS-60E3 the correct one please?

43 minutes ago, malc-c said:

Steve, how far "out of warranty" was the windows laptop, and was it budget, mid-range or hi-end machine.  Under consumer law the normal 12 month warranty means nothing as you are entitled to expect an item to last a reasonable amount of time and be fit for purpose.  For arguments sake, you would expect a good few years of service from an expensive mid-range laptop compared to the cheapest laptop you can find as you would expect the internal components to be of higher quality.  If your laptop went pop, and it was of no fault of your own, and is not that old then I would suggest going back to the retailer.  Don't let them fob you off with it being the manufactures responsibility, that is totally incorrect, your contract is with the retailer, and it's the retailers choice or option to seek redress from the next person up in the supply chain.  Naturally you won't get a new replacement, and the offer will be to repair the device, and that is common practice.   Now if on the other hand the laptop was just a few hundred pounds when purchased five years ago then I doubt you would be able to seek any redress as that period of time would be acceptable as a decent length of life, if it's 13 months old, then you wouldn't be expected to replace the device after such a short period of time.

As far as chromebooks - they don't run windows OS so ASCOM and all the other software you have on the laptop won't work.  Chromebooks are aimed at having all your documents online with access through portal apps on the machine.  I think of them as glorified tablets  

Hi Malcom it was a customer returned unit from a company on amazon with their own return to base warranty. l think l paid about £340 for it .When it first started to play up last summer l tried to contact them and they were no longer trading, or they had changed their name.  lt was repaired on Saturday by a friend of my sons. He said the hard drive was an old one not SSD and it only had half the amount of RAM in it. l'm not too clever on computers. Still all sorted now for £80 so well happy. lt's like a Ferrari now lol. 

Hi my  HP Windows 11 laptop went pop last night just night of warranty, typical. Panicked a bit as going away next week so ordered a Chromebook to pick up this morning. Been reading that you cant control mounts from a Chromebook and Celestron software doesn't recognise it (l think thats what l read). Has or is anyone using a Chromebook to control their mount or is there software available? Going to get a refund on my card until l o a bit more research. Thanks in advance for any replies. 

Steve.

8 hours ago, Gfamily said:

Buying property isn't difficult, but you can only stay for 90 days out of every 180 - and it's not so easy to buy stuff in UK to take out there on a permanent basis (we took our e-bikes out during the transition period in 2020; since then there's a limit of about 400 euros before you need to declare and maybe pay duty on stuff).   

 

You can get a visa of course. 6 months or 12 months but you have to come back to UK to renew. Although l dont think it is just a case of grabbing a new visa and returning. 

At least 6 that l know of. 

40 minutes ago, Marvin Jenkins said:

Hello from SWFrance too. Tarn et Garonne, not far from Lauzerte.

B3 skies in your back garden are a joy, I pinch myself sometimes to make sure I am not dreaming.

I hope you get a scope sorted in time for the nights getting longer and darker.

Marvin

We are practically neighbours lol.