Shimrod

2 hours ago, Naughty Neal said:

One should add that one won't see the views often seen in pics on the tv , magazines or via NASA etc,etc.

Good Binoculars are a good shout.

Qne shout if a good smart phone is owned is a celestron telescope with the starsense system, attach a phone to the starsense and be guided around the sky.  One can check via the starsense app which phones are compatible.

I think the challenge with binoculars is getting a six year old to point them in the right direction. Something that gives a wide field of view (with appropriate eyepiece) such as @Carbon Brush has suggested would be more appropriate. This gives time for the adult to align on an object for  the six year old to view. In this case something which can track the sky (either goto or simply motorised) would keep the object in view for longer.

29 minutes ago, Colinxdr said:

Hi, Thanks Olly,  I did think of that, but thought better of it incase it damaged theirs.

Did the handset LCD display illuminate but there was no response from the buttons, or was the handset dead completely?

I've just bought this - although I've always associated DK with children's books, this one is an interesting read for adults as well. I've had a quick flick through and it goes through a history of astronomy, key figures and discoveries from 600BC as well as discussing astro-physics concepts and theories about the universe.

Needs to be read on a tablet or other large device - it has a lot of diagrams that won't look great or be easily readable on a standard 6" kindle.

Astronomy Big Ideas Simply Explained

18 hours ago, Trippelforge said:

I want to pickup a power station / battery pack to run my mount and DSLR. I can't afford a very expensive one, so I am hoping I can use something around 296wh. 

However after trying to find the exact amount of power my mount (AVX) and DSLR use (D5300) I am having issues calculating it out. Mostly due to some comments others have made about run times with similar equipment. Such as they are getting a lot more hours off of very small packs.

Anyhow I have a Nikon D5300 and a Celestron AVX. I want to use it camping, so I need something large enough to run it maybe for 4-6 hours. I keep searching for the exact wattage each uses, but coming up with varying amounts. From what I can tell they add up to 96 total watt hours. But I think the AVX number is coming off slew usage, not tracking. But still a 296wh pack only gives me 2.6 hrs of run time. Yet others are saying they have gotten with similar equipment 6hrs off a battery 1/3 the size.

I am a bit confused on everything obviously, but I want to order something ASAP due to camping season coming up for my son and I.

Can someone simply say "if you want around 6 hours get this sized (Wh) battery pack"?

Thank you for the help!

I can't tell you the calculation you need to use, but I can say that your calculation is wrong! I have the Celestron Powertank Pro which is 158wh, and that runs the AVX, starsense, focus motor, wi-fi and astro camera for 3-4 hours over a few nights. As you only want to run the AVX (the camera will be on its own battery presumably) then your power requirements will be a lot lower than 158wh. So if you can find something cheap with this capacity you will be fine. I don't know if you can get these in the US but this is the better capacity than the Celestron Powertank Pro but half the price:  Beaudens powertank

There's a discussion on powertanks in this thread, where the one above was recommended:  https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/410049-argh-power-banks/#comment-4382132

2 hours ago, Trippelforge said:

I guess due to tracking? I purely do imaging, so I guess maybe I need to simply suck it up and pay the money. The one thing though is it's so expensive I am wondering if it would be best to just pay double and pickup a power station and use the supplied cable. That's an entirely new issue for though. 

There is a compatible one on Amazon for $17 that seems to have a reasonable number of positive reviews - https://www.amazon.com/Compatible-Celestron-Telescope-Replacement-switching/dp/B00DILJCZM

11 minutes ago, Trippelforge said:

Why does the 89.00 one say it's 5 amp (that one is 2.5)? It does list the AVX on the compatibility list though. Hmm... does it not matter?

On the Celestron website it recommends the 5a power supply if imaging, but says for visual the 2 .5a supply is sufficient .

55 minutes ago, Trippelforge said:

I ordered an AVX (which I posted about) and need to buy an AC adapter for it. I don't own a power station of any kind and I don't want to spend anymore right now. The cigarette lighter adapter is ANNOYING in my opinion... I imagine they do that so you have to buy their other options, or their power banks. But not everyone runs mounts outside of their backyards. 

Anyways I need to get one ordered today. And obviously Celestron's branded one is the top result, but I have never seen an AC adapter for that price before. Sure it screws in, but I attach the bricks to the legs anyways. I noticed highpoint had one for 40 bucks (USD) or so, but they are back ordered (not shocking). 

So what makes these SO GREAT that they can charge so much for them? Is it simply branding? I have a hard time believing that they are made outside of same plant as the ones for 1/4 of the price.

That brings me to the question also if you guys could point me to a reliable cheaper option.

Thanks!!!!

 

The Celestron 5amp power supply is £39 - approx $47 before shipping costs at Picstop but they don't ship to the USA - try looking at a few UK or European websites that ship internationally. Might not come with a US plug though.

4 hours ago, Trippelforge said:

Thanks for the article! So it seems it has been around 4 years or so when the upgrades were made. I assume then I don't have to worry about getting the older model. Is simply possible to know via the saddle photos? It's probably dumb to even question but ya never know. I noticed the Skyportal, so obviously the connection is decent, any idea on the range you are getting? 

So any 12v supply will work, you don't need the 80 dollar Celestron version? It's noted that IF you don't use their branded one that the warranty would be voided. However you said it screws on, so I guess it's special? As mentioned I simply bought an adapter to go from cigar to a standard plug.

 

 

I bought my AVX in 2019 and it had the upgraded saddle - the article is from 2019 but I think the mount updates were a couple of years earlier - you won't have to worry about getting the older model.

I don't know what the range of the skyportal is as I've never tested it - I have my laptop around 10 ft away from the telescope and use an xbox controller (with CPWI) to control the mount when doing visual. This saves me tripping over cables (which I've done in the past!). 

I have not seen anything mentioned about voiding the warranty in the UK if  you don't use a Celestron power supply - I used to use a no name powertank with a lead acid battery but bought the Celestron Powertank Pro as it was much smaller and lighter. There are plenty of people powering their Celestron mounts with something other than Celestron power supply. The key thing if using a mains supply is to make sure the positive/negative pinout is correct for the  mount.

8 minutes ago, Trippelforge said:

Thank you, I went ahead and ordered one last night. I got it through Amazon (899usd) as I figured it I got a lemon I could simply return it. 

A few questions if you don't mind; First of all what's with the supplied power supply? I also ordered an adapter for it so I could use it, as "supposedly" if you don't use Celestrons 80usd supply it voids warranty. For one thing... How do they even know? Anyhow what power supply are you using? Secondly what type of USB cable needs to be used for the connection from the hand controller / PC. I noticed it was update a few years back from a serial connection. I appreciate the help!

 

 

It's been out almost a decade hasn't it? I do know they updated the serial port interface to USB. Although I am not sure what type of cable I need. I don't understand why Wifi wasn't built in though, or why the power connecter is the type it is (lol).

There's a review of the AVX here which mentions some of the improvements including motors and base castings: https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/reviews/telescopes/celestron-advanced-vx-9-25-inch-schmidt-cassegrain-telescope-review. The saddle was also changed to a dual vixen/CG saddle.

The USB cable is mini-usb at the handset end - I can't remember if one came with the mount. I use the skyportal dongle for wi-fi on mine to reduce the number of cables.

I am not sure what you mean by the power connector type - it seems pretty standard and is a screw-in design to avoid sudden power loss if it falls out. Unless you are concerned about tripping over the cable and pulling the mount over. I power my mount with a celestron powertank pro but any reliable 12v supply will do. When I bought mine the power cable came with a cigar lighter socket at the other end.

2 hours ago, Trippelforge said:

There isn't a reason to go into my hellish road with my CG-4 again around here. So I will simply say that I am giving up on it. And now looking for a budget option that can simply do what my son and I need. I don't have a lot of money, which means I don't have a lot of options obviously. Which sucks... but we can always upgrade to a more serious rig in a few years.

With that being said there are only a few go-to tracking mounts on the table under 1k. Such as the EQM-35 (880.00) & AVX (899.00). 

Anyways, so my son and I shoot DSO's primarily and our exposure times are fairly short (45sec - 1min). So I am pretty much looking for a mount that's solid enough to keep up those numbers tracking wise. Equipment wise I will simply be using an 80ED triplet & DSLR, which equal around 10lbs. 

I know people often recommend the HEQ5 (1,335.00), but an extra 435.00 is hard to swallow right now.

So as the title asks, would an AVX do well enough for what my son and I need?

Side note, prices are in USD. I forgot most on this site aren't in the US. Also another side note; I have scoured some classifieds, and found a few OK deals (cloudynights), but I really want a warranty and a way to simply send it back if its horrible. And I have bought used equipment before anyhow and it didn't turn out as great as I thought it would.

Thanks for any help!

 

 

It works fine for me, I use mine with an 80ed for imaging and an Edge 8" for visual. I think the issue with the AVX came from some of the early mounts, and there was a revision of the mount several years ago. However its early reputation has stuck throughout its life. Interestingly the price gap between the AVX and HEQ-5 here is a lot smaller - the HEQ5 does have the advantage of having the rowan belt upgrade which can be added at a later point to improve tracking (and reduce mount noise).

On 20/10/2023 at 15:08, Virgo man said:

Hi guys was thinking off putting celestrone electronic focused on my c11 xlt I’ve got starsence and Wi-Fi gadget on scope I run through my iPad but can you run focuser through iPad or has it got to be set up through handset I don’t want to connect to a computer to many cables going on will take any advice before buying as it’s not cheep is it worth the money 💰 👍

You can run the focuser from a tablet or PC - I use both on occasion with my Celestron mount and never use a handset. I use it with an 8" Edge HD and I find I can focus better as there is no wobble on the scope as you are operating the focus remotely.

edit: It seems to be out of stock in the UK but it can be bought from Amazon US (via the Amazon UK website) for delivery on November 1st.  Do read the additional terms and conditions though as it may be a hassle if you need to return it.

1 hour ago, mikewash111 said:

Hello, does the AVX mount handle a celestron C8 effectively with attachments? it says it is capable of 30 lbs., with or without counterweights? any help is appreciated thanx

I use an Edge 8" on my AVX - with ASI533 camera, and for visual with a Starsense & finderscope attached along with a variety of eyepieces. It  works fine although I use two Celestron counterweights as one is not enough to balance the scope.

The C8 is a little lighter than the Edge, but I don't know if it would make a huge difference from a counterweight perspective - someone else may be able to comment.

On 14/09/2023 at 17:28, sojourneyer said:

oops, my bad and it is way too pricey

I think you need to compare like with like - this is more than just an enhanced Starsense unit. As well as providing the same functions as Starsense, it is also an autoguider for astrophotography.

A cheap guide camera and guidescope is £200, an equivalent with an IMX290 sensor will be around £300, and you might expect to pay around £200 for a Polemaster or Ipolar for accurate polar alignment.

When you add all this together, the price of the autoguider (while not cheap) is roughly the equivalent of buying the same components individually - the autoguider has the added advantage of not needing a laptop - pricewise it is equivalent to the Staraid Revolution which provided similar functions.

The biggest downside I can see is that it only appears to work with Celestron mounts (and only a limited set), so like buying into the ZWO ecosystem, you have to be confident that you won't go to a non-Celestron mount at some point in the future.

One of the offers of the day on Kindle is Brian Cox & Jeff Forshaw: Black Holes The key to understanding the universe for 99p  - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Black-Holes-Key-Understanding-Universe-ebook/dp/B09W4DQ441/ref=lp_5400977031_1_8?sbo=QS21L9be7oZFAGyl4IXR%2Bw%3D%3D

Meanwhile, over on humble bundle (until 19th October) you can get Redshift 8 & 9 premium PC, along with Redshift Sky Pro for Android for £13.85 Humble Bundle - Night Sky Navigator's bundle

I can't find much discussion on Redshift as planetarium and telescope control software, and I'm a bit puzzled as to why the bundle includes V8 & V9 of what seems to be the same package (despite the slightly different names). Although the software is available for Mac & IOS, this offer seems to be Windows and Android only.

At less than £14 and with some of the money going to charity, it might be worth a go for someone - Redshift 9 is currently on sale on Amazon at over £100.

(for anyone worried about the humblebundle website, I've used it on and off for several years, and it is owned by the Ziff Davis group - so not some dodgy operation!).

35 minutes ago, sojourneyer said:

Does anyone have the latest update in regard to vixen producing their telescope mounts? It has been over two years since I have seen any of their mounts available on the marketplace.

There was a thread about vixen here. The summary was a chance in distribution made it difficult for UK retailers to offer the mounts at a competitive price.

https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/404515-dear-flo-what-happened-to-the-vixen-products/#comment-4335305

12 hours ago, mistuk said:

I've got a C8 Edge which currently has a vixen dovetail plate along the bottom. I've recently bought a ZWO AM5 mount, and I'm thinking about how I can mount accessories to the top of the C8.

I have an ASIAIR which I want to mount somewhere, and I'm thinking about getting a small refractor that I can mount on top of the C8 to use independently (bonus if it can be easily removed from the c8 and used completely on its own with the ASIAIR), but also to use as a guide scope for the C8. I have a x0.7 reducer for the C8, and I'm aware that an OAG is a better option for an SCT, but is there an option available?

I currently only have one camera a planetary / guide camera - a ZWO 224 MC - but will be looking at adding a DSO camera in the near future.

Im also keen to understand the mounting hardware I would need. Now I have the AM5 I'd be up for swapping the existing vixen dovetail for a losmandy style if there was good reason.

Many thanks

mistuk

You can mount a second finder shoe on the telescope - I have a finderscope in one, and Starsense in the other on mine.  Celestron sell a dovetail (https://www.firstlightoptics.com/dovetails-saddles-clamps/celestron-cge-dovetail-bars.html) that let's you piggyback other equipment on top of the scope. I bought mine as part of a Celestron 60mm guidescope package that they don't offer any more. I've never used it though as the 60mm scope unbalanced the OTA on my AVX too much.

For small accessories like my dew controller (which I also use to distribute power) I use velcro to attach to the the OTA or the mount.

Still no publicity at Martin Mere, but I've noticed it overlaps with the late opening to see the (thousands) of geese coming in to roost at Martin Mere. Expect the car park to be busy as these are popular events, and it is free to enter the nature trail (not the whole centre) after 5pm. If you're not a member, admission to Martin Mere is £15 per visit.

https://www.wwt.org.uk/wetland-centres/martin-mere/whats-on/late-opening-goose-spectacular

Edit: Here's the event listed on Gostargazing with an estimate of the sky quality and the phase of the moon:  https://gostargazing.co.uk/events/stargazing-at-martin-mere-with-liverpool-astronomical-society/

On 28/09/2023 at 18:42, wookie1965 said:

Didn't even know about it I'm only in St. Helens as well. 

I am very close to Martin Mere and go most weekends. I didn't know about it - it's not advertised on their website and I've seen no publicity within the centre. 

The site is in a good location for dark skies, but is surrounded by tall trees which impact the accessible sky.

6 hours ago, Andy ES said:

Thanks I have had a look but wanted to get some up to date views. Hoping they have ironed out issues and installed new firmware that seemed to be previously an out of he box required upgrade.

Interesting that you would not fit it to a CPC, coming to that conclusion myself with the quick alignment (will try 2 star auto).

I presume the Starsense controller still accepts the CPC GPS info?

Also if you remove it and put it back on another night does it retain its physical alignment well enough to not need calibration? 

I would think it becomes pointless and more agro than any CPC alignment at that point.

Thanks.

I have a Starsense on an AVX mount - you can remove and remount without doing the calibration each time - it mentions this in the manual. You only need to recalibrate if you move to another scope, although the calibration does not take a huge amount of time anyway.

There is someone selling a Starsense unit in the classifieds (look for the CPC advert). You could probably try that one and if you don't get along with it you could sell it on for around the same price.

As @globular said, I start the alignment with Starsense and carry on fetching my eyepieces etc while the alignment takes place. I have to set up/tear down each time I want to observe, so anything I can do to reduce set up time is worthwhile for me.

@James B

I use CPWI to control the telescope - this effectively replaces the handset so date and time are taken from the laptop. I don't use a handset at all with the AVX (I connect via the Sky Portal wi-fi). However it works the same way if you connect via handset. You can also use CPWI as the telescope connection/control protocol - so if you have a preferred astronomy package (such as starry night or stellarium) you can use that via the CPWI control in the same way.

I don't own a Sky Sync, but I have read it can be sensitive to which aux port it goes in when used with the Starsense camera. I've had a quick look through but can't find the relevant posts - it may be worth searching on here for starsense and GPS 

11 hours ago, James B said:

Thank you for the replies. I'll try individual updates. 

The reason for the updates was to see if they cure the problem of the AVX only remembering the date/time when it was last shut down and not opening with the current time. In addition my Sky sync shows a totally wrong date/time but that's another story........

That's just the way it works - you can turn on the RTC option which will use the internal clock instead, but it can drift by  a few seconds. I control my AVX via laptop or tablet (depending on what I am doing) and the mount will take the date/time  from that instead - effectively providing the same function as the sky sync. I use the Skyportal wi-fi module, but you can try controling using a laptop and a cable via the handset.

On 26/09/2023 at 18:08, Beulah said:

Glendale app is pretty good too. It's more like a shortcut to a web page that you have on your phone. There's a lot of data to browse, including an IMF chart which predicts activity between 1-3 hours.

I use the Glendale app as well, but also have spaceweatherlive app (different from the Spaceweather.com website) on my phone. The latter is useful for alerts, gives an estimate of where the auroral band is and summarises the current state in a quick and easy to view dashboard.

29 minutes ago, James B said:

I've been updating the firmware on my Starsense, Hand Controller and AVX.
The CFM program recognises the equipment and proceeds to download the  7 updates. During the download 4/7 my Laptop reboots and leaves the equipment   unusable. Any advice would be gratefully received. Thanks.

I've not had any issues doing upgrades with CFM (similar set up - starsense, AVX) although I don't think I've checked for any updates since last year. 

I can only suggest trying to update one device at a time - if nothing else, it may help narrow down which one is causing the issue. Have you got the Starsense camera connected up correctly for the update - it requires a separate connection to the computer and mount - there's a diagram showing the connection set up in the CFM zip file.

I'm not aware of any updates to the starsense camera for a number of years, so you could just take that out of the equation completely.

2 hours ago, Jim Smith said:

Thanks. I tried a non-UK ip address and it worked just fine!

The link works for me from a UK IP address - maybe it was just a temporary glitch.

44 minutes ago, Elp said:

Interesting new mount, no need for a computer, but a heavy wallet.

Let the discussion begin.

It's way outside my price range, but I do like to see an increasing range of strain wave mounts. I'd be cautious about the computer in the mount - I know all goto mounts have electronics in them, but how easy is it going to be to get a replacement board/module in the event of failure? I just use a laptop and wi-fi/cable currently and I like anything that means I have less setup to do, but it feels like the external box approach (like the Asiair) gives more scope for replacement in the event of issues. At least with iOptron you are not tied in to a single manufacturer ecosystem.