Shimrod

When you get to the place for entering the city, you should be able to press the 'option' button to switch to lat/long entry.

That seems a reasonable price (around £450-500 off new) if it comes with standard accessories. The last one to sell on ebay went for £910 with a couple of cheap eyepieces and a dew shield.

You may need to get one of these: Altair mounting shoe Unfortunately that shows as out of stock - I don't know whether others like this Baader mounting shoe (£24) will fit the curvature of the tube. Altair describe their one as 'universal' so you will likely be ok with the Baader version. FLO also have their own version, at half the price of the Baader FLO mounting shoe so less of a risk cost wise. A photo of the mounting bracket would be useful, but if it looks like one of theseAltair 60mm finderscope then my suggestions should be fine.

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Sometimes the simplest solutions are the best and I don't know why I didn't think to look for any before I read this post! I bought some from amazon, but bought larger metal knurled knobs rather than plastic. I've been busy replacing all the thumb screws on my kit while waiting for some non-wet, non-cloudy weather. For Celestron owners, you can even get some anodised very similar to Celestron orange: thumb screws

You should have received Celestron Starry Night SE edition with your telescope. It's worth trying out - it is Starry Night Enthusiast with control for Celestron Telescopes. I use Starry Night Pro 8 (upgraded from SE7) and have no issues planning my sessions and controlling my scope. If you don't have/can't find the licence, it is $149 to get the Pro version with telescope control. In that case I would definitely try Stellarium first as the price is a lot more attractive! You could also look at CPWI (free from Celestron) which provides telescope control and a small (compared to other products) database of objects.

You might be better checking the specification for your battery - in my laptop it is a 3.69Ah battery, so one of these powerbanks keeps it going for quite some time. Use this calculator if your battery is specified in watt hours Wh to Ah calculator

I use one of these for my laptop charging - although it is no longer available, there are plenty of other powerbanks around for a similar price (£30) that can do the same thing. The USB-C port puts out enough power to charge up my laptop and extends the usage time. It' small and light so even having a couple to hand isn't an issue.

Although I have recently bought a dedicated Astro Camera, I have had a Canon 7d mkii for over 5 years and don't feel a need to upgrade. It's quite capable of producing images that are good for prints at A2. The next change for me will be the Canon R series at some point in future, but not until they get a bit cheaper and there is a good choice of native lenses. The driver for that change will be when I have the desire (or need) for a smaller and lighter system.

Assuming it was this listing (The only one that fits your description) Collimator then it sold for £25 + postage, so hardly profiteering. I sell occasionally on ebay and get all sorts of cheeky offers which I just ignore. It's entirely possible you just irritated the seller with your first low offer and he decided to see what the market would pay (in this case, about 2/3rds new price). I have seen prices of some items shift upwards over the last six months, but only slightly and that is easily explained by the shifts in currency exchange rates - with few exceptions the £ was weaker against most other currencies through the summer when stock would have been sourced and that would reflect on import costs.

Has Skyportal updated recently? There was a bug in CPWI recently that cased a Starsense alignment to do the exact same thing. I wonder if Celestron have managed to replicate the same bug in Skyportal as well.

You want to avoid using the 'mains' sockets as the inverters tend to be inefficient - make sure you can power everything you need from the 12v outputs or usb ports.

How big is big? If you are purely observing and want to learn the sky as well, then you are more or less in 12" territory for a Dobsonian - but you need to consider size and maneuverability/storage. If you want some assistance navigating the sky, then an slightly smaller goto or push-to would be an option. I think the first accessory most would recommend for a Dobsonian would be a Telrad finder which would leave some budget for a couple of budget eyepieces - or if you get a truss style dobsonian, then a shroud to cut out stray light.

How long do you want to run the equipment for - is this just to cover a night away from mains power or multiple nights? The device you've linked to looks interesting. I use a Celestron Powertank Pro at a similar price but half the quoted capacity and have had no concerns on power (although I have not used it for more than 3 hours in a session). I provide power to my laptop with a cheap (£30) powertank which is about the equivalent to the laptop battery. It's worth noting that if you want the solar charger it is another £120 on top, although it looks included on the product photos.

I use this website for a close view of the cloud cover Cloud Satellite Radar It works well while it is daylight - as it gets dark it is not very good at showing cloud cover. I do find the combination of recent cloud cover radar and forecast to be reasonably accurate though. It's been a month since I last had a clear sky - I've got one now, but can already see the cloud on the western horizon which is going to cover me as it gets dark.

I would expect the Nikon to be better for DSO and certainly more forgiving in terms of 'goto' accuracy as you have a much larger sensor. I would stick with the Nikon while you get some experience. A focus motor is good idea as it removes a source of 'wobble' whenever you touch the focuser - probably not essential - you have a sturdy telescope and mount. If you really want to push the Santa budget, you might want to consider a Ioptron ipolar or QHY Polemaster for polar alignment. I have the former and it really speeds up the alignment process - it does however require using a laptop - if you are not using a laptop for anything else, then it adds to setup time.

There's a recent user review and comparison with some other eyepieces here: https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/362468-hyperflex-7e1-seben-8-24-zoom-bco-18-10-compared/?tab=comments#comment-3950434

The trick is to be annoying enough that £3k to get you out the house in the evening seems like a bargain, but not so annoying that she gets all your scopes in the divorce settlement!

I sturggle getting focus when using my camera & lens for astro work. It's much easier to connect a table and use a 7" or 10" screen to check the image. @Paul2019 would you mind sharing what the problem was - it may help someone else in the future?

The tripod and OTA will require more space than the mount. It depends on how small your car is - I recently went away and took my Celestron AVX (similar in size to the HEQ5), Skywatcher 80ED (in hardcase), accessory case. That all fitted in the boot of a car (BMW 3 series) along with two suitcases, two collapsible chairs, camera tripod and two camera backpacks. You might just need to get creative with your packing technique. I will admit it took me 3 attempts to pack the car!

Like @jambouk I am confused. When you check your polar alignment with the Polemaster, does it indicate it has moved, and if so by how much? If you are relying on the SAM App to tell you PA is incorrect, then you might jsut want to stop using it. I've had a brief look at the reviews on Google Play and they are mixed, tending towards negative. People seem to have issues with GPS, location not being read correctly depending on device, and that could be the source of your mismatch. If your mount is not being moved or adjustment between sessions then I don't understand how the PA can change between sessions (Apologies for not understanding your original description of the issue). Are you seeing a shift in altitude and azimuth, or one axis only? I don't expect it to be happening, but could you put markers on the mount to see if either adjustment knobs are changed between sessions?

You've had some great suggestions above on scopes to get started, but it's worth considering some practicalities of scope ownership as well. 1) Storage - scopes, especially large Newtonians can require a bit of storage space. If married, an understanding partner can be an essential accessory for for amateur astronomers! 2) Observing location - do you need to move the scope far? Even setting up in the garden can take a bit of time as you move kit back and forth. A smaller scope can make this a lot easier- more so if you are driving to a dark location. 3) Automation - it's great when it works, but expect a fair bit of frustration getting everything set up. 4) Take your time to learn what you like- I have a shelf of 'essential' accessories I have bought that have had very little use. In some cases because I was too ambitious (need to get the basics sorted first), others because I have changed direction of interest since the purchase. If you really want to get into astrophotography, then my suggestion would be to start with a shorter focal length scope (such as @Alan64 suggestions) as this is a lot more forgiving although you might want to check how much vignetting you may get on a full frame camera for some of the OTA. The most useful 'essential' purchase I have made is an Ioptron Ipolar - for polar aligning my equatorial mount. Using this device lets me set up quicker and earlier (I can align the scope before I can even see Polaris) letting me maximise my viewing sessions.

I would suggest raising this at Team Celestron - it provides direct contact with the software and firmware developers - and some very responsive fixes to bugs. It also provides access to beta versions of software and firmware as they come out. You need to register on the website and wait a day or two to be approved before you can post.

Are you sure it is definitely out of focus? A couple of thoughts: 1) You could be experiencing zoom creep - if you have the lens pointing upwards, on a long exposure the zoom can slowly move backwards. You could check this (in the daytime) by pointing the camera upwards, take a short exposure at a long focal length, wait (however many seconds you are exposing for) and take another shot. See what focal length is recorded in the EXIF data for the two photographs. If they are different, then you need to find a way to stop the lens moving. 2) Do you have a stable tripod? You could be experiencing a bit of wobble in your images either by the wind catching the tripod, or mirror slap causing the camera to vibrate. There is an option in the menu to lock the mirror before activating the shutter which will reduce vibration - if it is wind blowing against the camera/tripod you could try hanging some weight from the tripod to give extra stability.

Here is an extract from the synscan manual for parking the scope. Are you doing "Park to" before you switch off, and do you get the 'Start from Park' option when you turn back on? If you're not using the handset, could it be that the park commands are not being sent correctly to the mount?