Shimrod

Wow! Definitely glad I didn't order these last year then. At least you'll be getting them at the slightly lower price - they went up in price sometime around December.

Could be the crystal spheres by David Brin? Each solar system is protected by a shell that can only be broken from the inside.

It's even more obvious than that - they're probably using rechargeable batteries. They should it from mains power adapter and that will solve all the glitches - just need to make sure it is at least 13.8v

Especially when Baader themselves say this on comparison between the Maxbright and Mark V:

I have a reminder email in place at FLO to tell me when they come back in stock - I've just had a look at the 'due date' on the website and it has gone back up to 90-120 days having previously been 30-40 days. I don't know whether this means some stock has come in and gone out, but not enough to satisfy existing orders.

You may get your wish! from : https://icelandmonitor.mbl.is/news/nature_and_travel/2022/05/16/uncertainty_level_announced_yesterday_due_to_earthq/ and

There's a huge logistics park at Knowsley (on the right as you drive down the M57 to Switch Island) which turns the whole sky white. No one who lives in that area will be doing visual astronomy - I'm not sure you'd even see the full moon!

It does mention a brake, but I guess you might have to wait for a manual to be published to get any detail about alt-az mode. Unique friction brake to safely stop movement during a planned or unplanned power interruption (from https://www.ioptron.com/product-p/h272a.htm)

It's a personal preference, but I prefer the tactile feedback from pressing buttons when slewing the telescope rather than using a touchscreen - it's probably the one thing that irritates me about the AZ-GTI - but I don't want to pay £150 for a hand-controller. When I am using the AVX, I use a gamepad for slewing via CPWI when controlling the mount via a laptop instead of the hand-controller. Wasn't aware they had released the app, which does make it a lot more attractive for visual users.

For those who want to use the mount for visual as well as AP, it's worth noting that the HEM27 ships with a hand controller and full goto. The AM5 appears to rely on an ASIAIR or some other external controller to provide goto facilities, so a bit less flexible for casual use. I am keen to see some reviews of these new harmonic drive mounts - while not in the market at the moment, having a single mount that is not much bigger than my AZ-GTI but which can carry all my scopes is an attractive proposition. No counterweights and an easier setup than my AVX would make it much easier/quicker if travelling to darker sites than my back garden.

How about two nails through a piece of wood? Never tried it myself but seen it used elsewhere.

It can take a few days for someone to review and approve membership of the forum. You should be able to register and access the test forum straight away, then a few days later someone will approve your access to the main forums.

Quantitative easing was introduced to increase the money supply and improve liquidity in the credit markets once the central banks could not drop interest rates any further. In the UK this occurred after the the Bank of England had dropped interest rates to 0.5% in March 2009. It had, and has nothing to do with currency exchange rates or being competitive with another country. It has distorted the bonds market, and it will be an interesting experiment to see how it all gets unpicked in the future. Currency fluctuations have always caused price changes but it does not mean your labour is valued less. In your example, if you only buy goods produced in your own country then the value of your labour is unchanged. Inflationary pressures that will apply to astronomy goods include wage and fuel inflation in the western world and transport costs. This latter cost I expect to resolve over the next twelve months or so unless we continue to see lockdowns in China - otherwise the world is very much learning to live with Covid. There is also wage inflation in China - there is already a very large, relatively wealthy middle class - as other wages get pulled up the cost of goods production will increase. With this I would expect to see a mix of price increases for industries that are difficult to relocate, for others the production lines will probably move to lower wage countries elsewhere in Asia. I expect some further price rises, a period of stability and then prices gradually dropping again as supply chain pressures ease. Let's check back in a couple of years and see what happened!

This is getting beyond a discussion for the astro lounge - the short answer is that inflation is measured by consumer prices not wholesale prices. The last two years other factors kept fuel prices down at the pump (primarily low demand), but diesel prices have gone up form £1.53 per litre to £1.74 per litre in three months - last year it was around £1.10 per litre. Transport costs feed into all other pricing and a shortage of lorry drivers has also pushed up wage costs.

The measure of inflation is derived from a basket of common goods that a household would typically consume - in the UK you can download the latest basket from here: ONS - CPI Basket of goods Inflation started rising last year because of ongoing supply shortages (and increasing transport costs) and also economic recovery after severe lockdowns in 2020. This year we have seen oil and gas prices jump hugely - I have just come off a fixed price tariff for gas and electricity and unit charges for both have trebled. It is primarily these costs (along with petrol/diesel) that are driving the inflationary pressures, because they feed into every other part of life. The good news is that the baskets represent the typical household and your personal rate of inflation may be much lower (or sadly, much higher!). The basket of goods doesn't include any astronomy equipment, so the inflation rate isn't going to be an exact indicator of where prices go and I think price rises will differ depending on the kit, as @Carbon Brush has described above.

The rapidly changing prices has also given us some anomalies - for a while, the Edge 8" was around £1895 but the same OTA with an AVX was only £2049 - practically a free mount! But not everything has gone up- I've just checked back on some of my old FLO invoices: ZWO ASI533 - Sep2020 £899, today - £899 (and it has been £100 cheaper in the regular ZWO sales) AZ GTI + Tripod - March 2021 £39, today £319 - £20 cheaper! Which isn't to say the price of other stuff I have ordered hasn't gone up - but some of them are quite reasonable increases 5% on the ipolar over two years for example.

You might want to register at Teamcelestron and raise the issue there. I can see gazza asked this question last year, but for various reasons Celestron were not able to monitor the board for a while. The engineering team are back, and if you raise there issue there you will be talking to the people who write the firmware so may get some progress on a fix.

With the cost of oil and gas driving higher inflation, I expect to see prices of astronomy kit rise further. No because of the inflation figure itself, but it is going to put pressure on companies to increase wages, production costs (energy) are going to increase and it will cost more to distribute the goods. On top of that, you still have complete lockdowns occurring in China which are continuing to disrupt the supply chain. With predictions of recession and GDP contraction next year, that might be the trigger for prices changing direction - if the result is a drop in overall demand for astronomy kit and some of the fuel/wage pressures ease.

Local authorities in the UK have very limited tax raising powers - namely business rates (a property tax) and council tax (residential property tax). All other money is collected centrally (like VAT and income tax) and paid out to councils in the form of grants by central government. There is a more detailed explanation and comparison to some other countries here: https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainers/local-government-funding-england The UK is quite different in the tax revenue raising powers given to local governments compared to most other developed countries.

The ZWO electronic focuser fits the 80ed so if you're buying a ZWO camera then Asiair control seems like a way forwards. I have the ASI533 and it is a good match for the 80ed - the square sensor isn't really an issue, and you can always crop the image for aesthetic reasons if required. If you aren't desperate to buy the camera now, ZWO has had a Black Friday sale for the last couple of years with around 10% off cameras. Last year they also had a summer sale starting in July.

The Asiair ties you into the ZWO ecosystem - so only supports ZWO cameras, focusers and electronic filter wheels. This can be an advantage as everything should 'just work', but does restrict what equipment you can buy. The one exception is it will trigger DSLR cameras via the electronic shutter control. As a complete novice, my advice would be to start off with your DSLR - this will give you time to decide what targets you like to image as well as deciding whether or not imaging is for you. If it is, you will then have a better idea of what camera you might want to get - the ASI533 and ASI2600 are newer sensors and don't have any amp glow - others with more experience may comment on whether they produce cleaner images. The ASI2600 is APS-C sensor sized - if you decide this is the one to go for, you might also want to look at the Rising Cam version of this sensor which seems to have had a good reception and is considerably cheaper. There is a thread in the camera section on this.

If you have to go for the drilling out route as described by @wulfrun you might want to consider a set of these damaged screw extractors I had the same problem removing the focuser on my ED80 when upgrading to a Baader Steeltrak. One of the screws came out cleanly, the other two (soft metal) screws just ended up with stripped heads. For me these were much easier than trying to drill the screws out.

You've had some suggestions as the type of telescope and mount that might suit for imaging planets, but it would be useful if you could share some information that might help with some of the practical matters of telescope ownership. Some considerations are:: Storage - Have you got somewhere to keep the mount and scope (indoors or outdoors) Weight - Are you carrying this upstairs/downstairs or might you need to carry it some distance Setup time - an Alt-Az mount requires less setup time but an equatorial mount is really required for long exposure photography (Deep Sky Objects such as galaxies and nebula). It takes me 3-4 trips to the garden to set up my Celestron AVX mount and telescope Entry level equatorial mounts (EQ) suitable for AP such as Skywatcher HEQ5 and Celestron AVX will cost around £1000 - add a scope and some extras and you have spent most of your budget. I would concentrate on learning the basiscs and use your DSLR for photography rather than start out with a dedicated astro-camera. If you get an EQ mount you could always get a piggyback bracket to mount your camera on top of the scope and use one of your wider lenses to have a go at some DSO photography as well. There is also quite a long thread on here about 'No EQ imaging' but I can't remember the exact name - it's worth a read for the type of imaging that can be achieved from an alt-az mount with a bit of skill - hopefully someone else can point you in its direction.

That's a pity - I'd just found the perfect scope

I've used external batteries with mine (a Celestron Powertank pro) but that is quite expensive. @ScouseSpaceCadet has used a relatively cheap Talent battery pack. Worth having a search for his threads to find the exact details of the pack used.