Shimrod

The Celestron equivalent is CPWI - available from here If you don't want to use CPWI directly, then it can still be used for telescope control and other packages (I have used Starry Nights) can connect and control the telescope via the CPWI interface.

It will depend on your budget as well. Iceland is expensive, more so in August, and with an eclipse I should imagine most of us will be priced out of a stay! East Greenland will be on an expedition cruise ship at around £8k per person.... Spain will be much cheaper - you could always stay a distance from the path of totality and travel into the area on the day. It also has more scope for choosing where to go in the path of totality based on weather. The eclipse only cuts a corner of Iceland which gives limited travel scope to avoid any cloud. edit: You could always consider a cruise - see this thread - Eclipse Cruises although be aware the one to Spain will have you on ship for the eclipse (compared to Iceland where you overnight). I would not want to be jostling for position with 2,700 other people to get a view and no doubt there would be no room for photography

Not as expensive as I thought! For the one I looked at you will be in Reykjavik for the eclipse, so greater scope to travel somewhere with clear skies (although such a thing is even rarer in Iceland that it is in the UK). The cruise will probably cost less than one night's accommodation in Iceland during the eclipse!

Note quite the same scenario, but the reducer for my Edge fell apart in my hands. The retaining ring for the lens came loose while removing it from the back of the scope. It's possible the eyepiece was not fully tightened in the first place

I'm slightly confused by the screenshot - shouldn't the SSID for direct connection be showing as Synscan_xxxxxxxx? There's nothing like that on your list - have you changed the SSID or are you trying to connect to the synscan adapter via you home network?

My recommendation would be October, you'll do much better with the weather. If you go in March you will most likely still have a lot of snow and ice in the north. October time can be cold but still with some nice days - although it's possible to still have snow in the north. We did have a day snowed in one time in Akureyri as both passes were closed. It can also be incredibly windy, so do be prepared for some travel disruption. We've been to Iceland eight times, seven of those in October and have seen the lights every time - you need to keep an eye on the cloud forecast at en.vedur.is and be ready to travel to clear spots. Just about any location will do for lights once you are outside the main population areas.

There's a long thread over on cloudy nights that collates C8 serial numbers and age of OTA. Based on your serial number (905605), it puts this OTA early to mid-nineties as a best guess. https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/402734-celestron-c8-registry/#entry5161309

You could use the wayback machine to navigate to the older versions of the firmware - https://web.archive.org/web/20221115000000*/https://skywatcher.com/download/software/motor-control-firmware/ Here's a direct link to the 3.09 firmware version: https://inter-static.skywatcher.com/downloads/mc019_firmware_v0309.zip and the 3.15 version: https://inter-static.skywatcher.com/downloads/mc019_firmware_v0315.zip You can see by changing the filename you can pick out the firmware version you are after.

You can set the maximum slew speed of the AVX to limit the noise. In normal tracking operation you won't hear a thing, but it is noisier (although I don't think noisy) when slewing between targets. Setting maximum slew speed one down from maximum eliminates the noise issue for me. It takes a few seconds longer to move between targets at opposite sides of the sky, but if moving between targets in the same area of sky you probably won't even notice the difference.

Is this the same Robert Reeves that lends his name to this telescope from Celestron? https://www.firstlightoptics.com/beginner-telescopes/celestron-firstscope-signature-series-moon-by-robert-reeves.html

I think your biggest challenge will be finding a Canon Ra at a sensible price - it was launched in 2019 and discontinued by 2021. I don't think they sold a huge amount, and a quick search reveals only two on ebay - one with a starting bid of £1850 and the other with a price of £4000 (both body only). It's probably cheaper to buy a dedicated astro camera and the R6 full frame body and you will have the reassurance of a warranty on both.

They did only have two available at that price and both have been sold - possibly just a clearout of old stock?

If you need to use the Amazon credit, it might be worth confirming that it can be used with Amazon payments - I had a quick look at the T&Cs of Amazon Pay and it seems like it is only gift cards that can't be used on third party sites. One astronomy shop that take Amazon Pay is Tring Astro. I had a quick look at a few stores but this is the only one I could find on a quick check.

I may have this wrong, but a quick look seems to indicate that if the seller is UK based, then even though the item is shipping from abroad the price should already include VAT. In this case, the seller is Bresser UK with a regiestered UK company and address. They only have two scopes available, so looks like a genuine sale. I did notice a similar bargain before Christmas with the Bresser Binoviewer from Ebay compared to buying from Bresser UK. Edit: It would probably be expensive if you need to send it back to Germany though!

It's worth checking the warranty of the individual manufacturer - some, but not many will offer a transferable warranty - although that does tend to be the more expensive items. Unistellar for example offer a 2 year transferable warranty.

Listed as $4000 at Astronomics Assuming that translates to pounds, you'll want to add another £1000 or so if you want the wedge and the Starsense Autoguider. It makes it a very expensive package. I can't see there being a huge market for this at the price - doesn't seem like it is pitched at expert astrophotographers, and there other packaged devices are half the price (or less) of the Celestron, with the exception of the Unistellar evScope 2.

I think that is going to be the new Takashashi Origami range. Choose the waxed paper option if you want water proofing.

I would be hoping for a harmonic drive mount, but the picture would hint at a RASA (presumably 6" guessing by the focal length - although that doesn't tie up with the tag line of innovation. or something 'BIG'. Could they be pairing up the starsense/autoguider technology to be making a large Seestar/Dwarfstar equivalent? Any thoughts as to what might be coming?

It looks like the ASI715 is quite a new camera - does the ASIAIR software need an update to be able to recognise the new camera? Given the ASIAIR only works with ZWO cameras I assume there's a config file somewhere on the system with a signature for each of the ZWO cameras.

It looks more like early morning than late at night. These times are UTC: https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/3-day-forecast

I have recovered data from disk drives in the past (both SSD and mechanical) using r-studio that @Adreneline has mentioned above. It all depends on what has failed on the drive - you mention that it cannot be seen by other laptops when mounted in a caddy. Is this not seen as in 'can't seen any physical disk at all' or just 'can't see the formatted drive'? The screenshot below shows part of the disk management screen (search create and format hard disk partitions in windows) with allocated drive letters. If the disk can be seen but shows as 'unformatted', it could just be the partition data or MBR has been damaged and that might be recoverable. If nothing shows for the disk, it most probably indicates a physical failure (or a defective caddy - you might want to check with another disk).

Although you are protected from a single disk failure using these approaches, there is still a risk of physical failure - of the whole device, power surges, theft etc. I back up in this manner, but also use a cloud back up service. You could set up some simple scheduling and copy to OneDrive (if you have an MS Office licence) which will give 1tb of storage. I've used backblaze for quite a few years now to back up my server. This is very much a backup service, not a cloud drive, but it is cheap at $99 per year (black Friday discount code BLAZEITUP23 gets 20% off) and you can also restore versions of your files for 30 days/1 year depending on subscription. A small utility runs in the background to automatically update to the cloud service. This isn't going to help the OP restore the data, but it can help avoid future data loss. Other companies offering similar services include Acronis, Carbonite and Crashplan.

The SVbony 3-8mm eyepiece is now in the Black Friday sale on Amazon at £110 for those who don't want to order from abroad. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Svbony-Planetary-1-25inches-Magnification-Observations/dp/B0BLTY9JBX/ref=sr_1_3?crid=2MH8LJ12W3OUK&keywords=svbony&psr=EY17&qid=1700307900&refinements=p_89%3ASvbony&rnid=1632651031&s=black-friday&sprefix=svbony%2Cblack-friday%2C61&sr=1-3&ufe=app_do%3Aamzn1.fos.23648568-4ba5-49f2-9aa6-31ae75f1e9cd

As far as I'm concerned, you're not a real astronomer until you've dropped a piece of kit on the floor. For reference, I'm a really, really real astronomer.

You can get the board from RVO or Grovers Optics. You could also try FLO, they have some Skywatcher boards listed on their website but not for the HEQ5, but worth asking.