Gfamily

And occasional hot big bangs I assume

I'm not exactly sure what you're doing - but as far as I can tell, there shouldn't be any need to use the home wifi router. For me, I switch on the mount, disconnect the laptop from the home network and connect to the mount's wifi instead - which will be something like SynScan_aa99 and the IP address shows as 192.168.4.1 I can then control the mount from the laptop.

I'd say for printing out purposes, Cartes du Ciel is a good place to start. I've prepared finder charts that I print onto A4 pages that go inside clear plastic display wallets. These are made up of chart screenshots that are pasted into a Word / Open Office page and then saved as a PDF Finder view and eyepiece views can be selectively reversed depending on your individual set-up of course

I'm afraid I don't know whether the A6000 can send its image stream directly to a PC, which you might want to do for planetary imaging. Certainly, for deep sky or skyscapes you could use an intervalometer to capture multiple images to be downloaded and stacked separately.

Ian Morison (ex Gresham Professor of Astronomy and Jodrell Bank) has an Astronomy Digest post about the similar A5000. The A6000 is better as it's easier to disable automatic Noise Reduction, which you don't want to use on Astro photography. I have the A5000, which works very well on my smaller scopes (its body is ⅓ the weight of my dSLR) http://www.ianmorison.com/the-sony-a5000-apsc-mirrorless-camera-an-astrophotography-bargain/

With a Baader full aperture filter, there's no need to be concerned regardless of the optics. You can make a DIY filter up to 200mm aperture with an A4 sheet of Baader film

with regard to scratches on the Baader film, my view is that our eye has an aperture of several mm^2, and even if there is a bit of damage to a solar filter, it would need to be really obvious to let more light through than our eye already allows. Yes, I appreciate that we don't spend a lot of time looking directly at the Sun in normal times, but we often have it visible to some extent and it doesn't irreperably damage our vision - so small scratches and pinpricks on the solar foil won't have an immediate and catastrophic effect. Certainly, hold the filter up to the Sun to check for major damage or thinning before mounting it on the scope, but don't worry too much if you can't see anything obviously wrong.

My understanding is that refractors are the only scopes that are suitable, as glass has more or less 100% transparency for the IR light that is going to cause problems. Reflectors and Catadioptric systems are more likely to be damaged because reflecting surfaces may only reflect about 95%, and if the light has been brought close to focus, the 5% that's absorbed can be pretty intense. However, this assumes glass throughout, if the light goes through any plastic optical elements close to the focal point, there is the likelihood of damage being caused. I've used 50mm binoculars for projection for tens of minutes at a time without any problem, so I would expect anything up to 70 or 80 mm should be OK for reasonable length periods - though maybe make a cover for the objective to pop back on between observations

No need to apologise.

Bear in mind that moving the secondary will imply moving the focuser as well - which needn't be a problem, but will be more things to move and line up again. You might also consider getting a filterwheel and some filters for the refractor - as that should eliminate a lot of the Chromatic Aberration - Yes, you may need to set the focus each time, but it should be do-able Caveat - not done this myself - so it may be rubbish advice

The orbit of Venus is such that as seen from Earth, its evening apparitions are separated by just over 18 months. In addition, as the planets travel along the ecliptic, the height of the planet in the western sky depends on how that is angled in the evening. As it happens, this angle is greatest in the spring, and shallowest in the autumn. So, two things have come together; firstly, Venus simply wasn't suitably positioned to be visible this spring, and is only just moving away from the sun to allow it to be seen in the evening again. However, because we're later in the year, the angle of the ecliptic to the horizon is less, so Venus will track lower in the sky than last time. In addition, for those of us in more northern latitudes, the summer night sky doesn't get properly dark until after Venus has set (or at all to be honest), so it'll never stand out as much as in 2020

Plus one for this suggestion. Velcro stickypads work well to keep it circular. 2.4m x1.2 m for a fiver wiil supply half your club members too!

Unfortunately, very little astronomical darkness through the summer months. We were able to read a newspaper at 11:30pm inside our tent in July Beautiful scenery, but astronomy would have to wait until later in the year

As Herschel discovered, as well as the visible light, sunlight contains significant amounts of Infra-Red light; and it's that, that causes the damage to the eye. The IR light is absorbed rather than reflected from the moon's surface, so doesn't make it back to us when we look at the moon.

Thanks, that's useful to know.

I'm afraid that getting a setup that'll be usable for telescope astrophotography is simply outside your budget. You could consider a tracker that will work with some of her existing kit, such as the SkyWatcher Star Adventurer, that will allow her to use her cameras and tripods to take long exposure images using wide fields to great effect. Realistically, to get a telescope setup capable of good astrophotography, you would be looking at 3 times your budget. However, you can certainly consider getting a starter telescope to whet her interest, such as something like a 6" dobsonian, which will allow you both to explore the night sky without the need to capture it digitally.

How accurate is your pointing when using Skeye with a 90 degree offset? Does it give you accurate 'Push to' centering on targets to within "eyepiece viewing" precision ?

I bought one as an alternative to a Red Dot Finder, and I use it on both my SCT and my Mak, where it supplants the standard 6x30 straight through finder.

GOTO will take money away that could otherwise be spent on the optics, and it sounds as though you're willing to find your way around the sky yourself, so I would say to go with the Manual approach. If you do buy a 6", 8" or 10" Dobsonian (according to your budget), then I would very much recommend getting the Illustrated Guide to Astronomical Wonders, which is an excellent book for suggesting targets to look at. (The link is to the Google Books Preview page - so you can browse through it and get a feel for it).

That's potentially useful for a friend who is looking at the Celestron StarSense with a Manual mount , but might find Skeye useful as an alternative

I've just bought the Plus version for £5.99 - the advantage of Sky Safari Plus over Stellarium Plus is that the former allows you to adjust and align/sync on your GOTO targets, so you can compensate for any inaccuracies in the GOTO. The only issue I had was in setting the IP address and Port No needed to link to the AZ GTi (127.0.0.1 and 11882 worked for me)

One thing about both Maks and SCTs is that their relatively narrow field of view means that larger DSOs such as Open Clusters don't look at their best. For example, the Double Cluster in Perseus may only be visible as a cluster and a half - and M81/M82 can only be seen together if both of them are hard up against opposite edges of the field of view. Even smaller open clusters can look disappointing, as one of their features is how they stand out as a compact unit against the background scattering of stars. I don't think I really appreciated this until I borrowed a short f/5 refractor last summer, clusters really stood out which made a big difference to the quality of the view. Personally, I have an 8" F/10 SCT and a 5" F/12 Mak - I rarely have them both out at the same time - the 8" comes out for Star Parties and on the rare occasion we go specifically out for a night's observing under dark skies in North Wales, the Mak is what we take on holidays, as it's much more compact both as the OTA and the tripod.

Currently £5.99 for Plus and £19.49 for Pro

Jupiter and Saturn are potentially quite visible low in the East and South East before Sunrise at the moment. Is it possible you were seeing them? If they weren't visibly moving against the backrground stars, then it's far more likely than anything human made.

Given that we live inside a galaxy very similar to M31, I think we can expect that the view from 'close up' would be similar to our view of the Milky Way, i.e. visible but not overwhelmingly bright.