Shimrod

Have you considered using a tracing service? If you've truly written the money off and it is substantial enough, a debt recovery service (which would do the tracing for you) might be an option although it would cost a fair chunk of the debt.

Congratulations on the continued growth! I did wonder whether some of that space might have been for stocking some of the 'retro' telescopes discussed here:

I've hand a genuine Canon version since 2015 - certainly when I bought mine quite a few of the clone versions had reviews reporting damaged cameras. I thought it worth spending a few pounds extra for piece of mind. I've used clones of the LP-E6 batteries for years though.

I think I'll be making a phone call tomorrow!

I took out a subscription to Sky at Night in 2019 on a special offer - it's been renewing at £16.95 ever since. Just had a letter telling me that it is going up to £65. I know there are a few other people who've had this offer, so watch out for letters in the next few days. At full price I will probably review the other magazines available and consider whether I want to swap - I do like the pull out monthly round-up section.

Make sure you get somewhere outside of Reykjavik if going to Iceland- the city lights are bright enough to drown out all but the brightest aurora. Somewhere out to Borgarnes (north of Reykjavik) or east towards Selfoss would be good - both give a good base for day time exploring if you have not been to Iceland before, and will give plenty of dark sky (weather permitting) for aurora.

I was going to suggest a compatible cable as they are a lot cheaper - the one I have cost £11 but it is no longer available. There are not listed on amazon or ebay, and the third parties selling genuine Celestron cables are asking £93 and £119!

So....I've just tried skyportal on my AVX and it only shows the mount as equatorial - which makes sense and is presumably reading this from the mount itself as I can find no option in the settings to change it. The settings may be slightly different for you as the 8SE could be mounted on a wedge. It's worth checking the settings to see if that is an option that can be changed. On Skysafari, you have to specify the mount type as part of defining the telescope you are connecting to.

Can you connect to the mount and confirm Skyportal is correctly configuring the mount as alt-az as well? My recollection is that it should pick this up from the mount but it may be possible to override it in the telescope config settings in the app.

What mount are you using? Also what software - are you using the skyportal app, skysafari or something else? When connecting to the mount, make sure it has the mount correctly defined as eq or alt-az.

If you connect a device using the USB port of the handset the handset will not respond to button presses - if you connect via wi-fi it works fine. It can be worth checking the firmware of the skyportal device - there was a firmware update last year that improved the reliability of the connection - if it's a new skyportal it may already be up to date - but something to bear in mind.

You don't mention what mount you are using, but you need to follow the same alignment procedure using your iPad and wi fi as you would for the handset. I would expect that to be pointing north and level at the start You can leave the hand controller connected, but it isn't necessary - I did find it a bit easier to control to be e mount movement using the handset (because of tactile feedback from physical buttons). Now I use an Xbox game controller instead via CPWI.

I've just come across this on another website - a night sky timelapse taken by a pilot on a flight across Europe. It's interesting to see the change and impact of light pollution even when flying at altitude.

How easy is it to polar align a 12" dob on a EQ platform? I'm imagining a lot of up and down moving from eyepiece to EQ platform as you adjust the settings.

Looks like another good chance for Aurora tonight, if you can find anywhere with a clear sky!

It is worth checking the firmware version of of the wi-fi adapter - I'm assuming you are using the Celestron Skyportal. There was a firmware update several months ago (possibly even last year) which greatly improved the stability of the wi-fi connection. You need to download the Celestron firmware manager from here: https://www.celestron.com/pages/drivers-and-software which will then check your device and download any updates required.

A forecast for a sustained period of the KP index being 5 or 6 over the weekend (tonight and Saturday) means a good chance of aurora on camera at least (and possibly naked eye if you are far enough north) if you get clear skies. NOAA 3 day forecast

But it's a pain getting down on your knees to look through it and the altitude adjustment knobs add to the awkwardness. I bought one, used it twice and replaced it with an ipolar! @Westmoorland you can get the automation you want, but it will involve spending a bit more money. A starsense unit will automate much of the alignment for you. If you are planning on using this kit for imaging though, you might want to consider what kit you need to support that - as that can make the starsense redundant. An alternative might be to consider one of the "all in one" guiding products that operate as standalone units. These will do everything you want controlled by your phone or tablet, but cost £700+

I'm not a fan of the bright colours either - I bought a ZS61 in space grey - I'd have bought a different scope had the choice only been gold or red. I suppose it makes them stand out, but they are just a bit too garish for me.

You need to do one of the following: 1) Change to the directory containing showtable and run the command from there 2) Update your windows path variable (search environment variables to find the right panel) to include the showtable location 3) Fully specify the path containing showtable from the command line i.e. c:\astropy\showtable astropyy/..... (assumes showtable is in the astropy directory off the c drive)

What persuaded you to go for the HEM27? You had some concerns about QC issues and the suggestion from others in the thread indicated a preference for the AM5.

You're putting a 9Kg OTA (before accessories) on a mount rated by Celestron for 4.5Kg - sounds like a recipe for disaster! I'd be worried about stability but also the likelihood of motor or gear damage trying to move the long, heavy tube around.

Like @Stu I've really wanted the Baader Maxbright binoviewer but I've put off the purchase as stock has appeared in the last couple of weeks as I'm not sure I'll get 'value for money' out of them at the moment. Next on the list is a large (12" or more) dob - but I have no where to store one, and no suitable car to transport one to a dark site. Final thing on the list is to buy a house in darker sky area - either south Scotland or Northumberland as with new(ish) houses built on a previous large garden plot next to mine, I've lost both south and east views and had my local light pollution increase massively. This one we will hopefully manage in the next five years (my wife is keen on a semi-rural location as well), and there's plenty of windows shopping taking place on rightmove!

These must be the most hard to get astronomy product of the last 12-18 months! Email received around 3pm today, Status when checked about three hours later! Not really an issue for me, as I'd decided to postpone the purchase of these for other reasons, but there's obviously a lot of pent up demand! I wonder how many came into 'available' stock (after pre-orders had been filled) for them to go so quickly.

A smaller scope than yours, but there was a recent discussion on using a reducer for visual on a C6 (and a C8) here: