Starfazed

Thank you all for the advice. I mentioned M101 mostly because it's quite high up, close to some very recognisable stars and variously described as bright or easy. Maybe with a 24 inch Dob! Tonight sounds like it may be clear, so I may get to test out some of the other deep sky suggestions. The guides say thousands of things can be seen in a six inch scope, so I'm hoping for more than a few planets, the odd cluster or double star plus M31! Maybe not the right forum to explain something else that has puzzled me, but obviously a long exposure camera on six inch reflector on an equatorial mount will reveal vastly more that what the eye can see. But if you're trying to take a long exposure of something too feint to see through the viewfinder, how do you know if you've pointed the scope at exactly the right bit of sky (and not accidently misaligned it by hitting the camera shutter!) before leaving it for a few hours to take the photo?

Several times now I've tried to find M101 without success using 10x50 binoculars or my 150mm Skywatcher goto reflector under a clear Bortle 4 sky. The two problems I have are knowing if I'm even close, and knowing if I'm looking at it without realising. That might sound silly when I have a goto scope. The gotofunction is great for obvious celestial bodies like double stars or clusters - the object sought probably won't be in the centre of the eyepiece but as long as it's in the field of view of a low power lens (25mm so x30), I can slowly by remote control app move it to the centre. That doesn't really work for feint objects though (or does it - any tips?) I might be looking for Neptune say, and there will be several equally feint stars in view, so which is Neptune? In that example I can usually work it out through colour and zooming in on Stellarium to work out which "star" is actually the planet. But for feint objects like M101 that just doesn't seem to work. I've tried star hopping from Mizar to 81 Ursae Majoris, then 84, 83 and 86. I realise everything is upside down so as the scope moves west the eyepice view moves in a totally different direction. But then it all seems to peter out: HD122007 is nowhere to be seen yet should be close to 86 and midway between 86 and M101. With no 86, there's no M101. Or maybe I'm staring at it without realising. Am I? I've used M101 as an example but other deep sky objects like nebulae or galaxies could apply too. I realise they won't be nearly as bright as M31 Andromeda, but it would be nice to think I can see and confidently identify more than one galaxy through a six inch scope. Or are my expectations set too high?

If it's any consolation, since getting my "new" scope a year ago I've had probably three clear nights i've ma aged to use it more than half an hour without giving in to cloud. Even spent a fortnight staying in Bortle 2 and 3 areas away from my usual city sky, and got maybe alf an hour between clouds. Do we ever have clear skies in the UK?

Definitely can't see it on my phone... Anyway, been playing further and discovered that I can use SS7 to control the scope if I connect using Synscan (Im using 2.4.10) but not Synscan Pro (2.4.16). Neither is quite the latest version but the older version of basic Synscan allows it to be controlled by SS7 whereas the newer one doesn't. Guess I'll not be updating Synscan for a while then. The main benefit to me of Synscan Pro is 3 star alignment, but as I can run Synscan and Synscan Pro together, if I launch both and let Synscan Pro do the alignment maybe I can then keep Synscan open (assuming it thinks the scope is aligned, if it's already aligned through Synscan Pro) and use SS7 to control Synscan? All this is theoretical - testing indoors on a rainy day as don't want to be wasting time trying this out in the precious few minutes without clouds!

Thanks, despite running Amdroid 12 (which os supposed to have it), that option isn't listed in developer options on my phone so so way to test it.

Hi, I'm also really struggling to get Sky Safari 7 Plus to connect to Synscan to drive my Skywatcher GOTO telescope. I bought SS7 specifically to allow me to point on the star map and go to it. This is on an Android 12 phone. I can connect without difficulty between Synscan and the scope but I just get the "can't make a wireless connection to the telescope" error message in SS7 when trying to connect. I had a big SS7 crash which prompted the ominous warning "something went wrong with sky safari 7 plus - sky safari 7 plus closed because this app has a bug. Try updating this app afyer the developer provides a fix". Next time I opened SS7 it connected to Synscan perfectly using IP 127.0.0.1 and port 11882. For a few precious minutes I could point at the SS7 sky map and the scope would go to what I clicked. Then it broke again and still won't connect. I have disabled battery optimisation settings for SS7 and Synscan and tried running g them split screen. No joy. Can anyone offer further suggestions short of seeking a refund from SS? The other program I was thinking of using to try controlling my scope was Stellarium, and in Synscan connection settings there is a built in option for Stellarium. Is that likely to work more reliably than SS7, or is there something inherent in Android phone apps that stops them talking to each other?

Oops didn't spot that, thanks!

As above. I bought Sky Safari to control Synscan as the Skywatcher software is clunky for finding objects. I really struggled at first to get the two apps to "tall" but finally managed it usomg port 11882 and IP 168.192.2.4, as advised on other fora. Since last week they aren't talking again, I've seen at least one Cloudy Nights thread on this so can't just be me. Process and equipment - Android 12 Galaxy phone, Sky Safari 7 plus, Synscan Pro and Skywatcher Discovery reflector. Turn on scope wifi, open Synscan, connect, align. Open Sky Safari and try to connect, error message "can't make a wireless connection to the scope". We'll, throughout that Synscan Pro remains connected, and I have enabled both apps to always be on in the background to avoid battery saving issues. Why won't Sky Safari connect any more? May as well not have bothered buying it if it won't do what I need, but is this a Synscan issue, SS7 or an A droid issue? Bit of a pain to find your apps are playing up at the start of an observational session.

For £100 you could get some decent 15x70 binoculars perhaps, and join a club where you might be able to look through other's scopes? Not mentioned so far but a spotting scope with a zoom would be very portable, though its small aperture, righted image, no finderscope and small tripod limits what you can see to moon and nearest planets (I have a 70mm that on full zoom shows Jupiter's moons). But overall, without a rock solid tripod anything that attempts to magnify the sky beyond where binoculars can take you will be a disappointment, and even a small scope needs quite a heavy tripod to be much use so most of what you lug around might be a tripod. That said, maybe the MAC would be a good compromise in limiting the length of a tube, if you also have to carry the tripod? Remember you can carry tripod and scope in separate bags so balance easier. My 150 Discovery would be the limit of what I'd want to carry on a train though and the two bags it requires (sourced on Amazon, generic bags) would fill the boot of a small car.

My experience of children is they can't "do" binoculars, can't get convergence or cope with each eye getting an image, can't close one eye, can't hold steady as too heavy. Living in a Bortle 8 city limits when can be seen, though I can carry my scope to the nearby park for planets and a few nice clusters. I went for a goto as I haven't time now to learn my way around the sky and the kids don't want me wasting time fumbling in the dark for obscure objects. I guess a starsense would make equal sense, for me tracking was more important than liveview of where in the sky I was. Deep sky objects are limited to Friday evenings (as no school next day) and a 30-40 min drive to a fabulous Bortle 4 site. Meal along the way, sleep 8n car coming back....can't do too often and most Fridays are cloudy or full Moon. But makes for a special evening on occasions. Pleasantly surprised myself to realise a cheap 6 inch reflector can show Uranus and Neptune so clearly.

Been at this malarkey for 8 months now and like the OP I'm still nearly always seeing white fluff down my scope. I think the cloud gods must be punishing me severely.

Hmm, when scope shopping I looked at all the collimation videos I could find, which only confused me all the more. For now I'm increasingly glad that I went for a reflector that claims not to need collimation and doesn't have an adjustable primary, though if I bite the bullet later for anything bigger than 150mm I'm going to have to figure it out some day!

You said you want to see Jupiter's great red spot. What's the minimum someone needs to spend, what's the smallest telescope and lowest power eyepiece needed to clearly see it? With my 6 inch reflector and 250x magnification (6mm plus Barlow lens) on a still night, the entire planet looks no bigger than a pea at arms length so I'd struggle to see the red spot!

Not for much longer, 12 inchers are being advertised:-)

Had a similar dilemma to you and similar reason for getting a scope. Wow what's possible for £500 now is another universe from what was around in my childhood. I narrowed down the options to a really big "pure" Dob like 10 inch, a push to like the 8 inch Starsense, or a 6 inch GOTO. After trying out some Dobs at a public observatory the two things I realised were 1. I couldn't find a thing up there and the kids would get really frustrated waiting ages for me to find anything. So it's got to be pushto or GOTO. 2. Having found things it was frustrating to find them disappear at high power after less than a minute and search for them again. Combine that with living in a Bortle 8 city where options are carry everything to the nearest park or drive 40 mins to a decent sky and it became a choice between the Heritage GTI (tabletop 6 inch) or Star Discovery 6(tripod 6 inch ) reflectors. As the former had sold out I got the latter. So far (limited by very few clear nights this year) I've been happy enough - I can see the bands of Jupiter at 250x using a cheap 6mm and Barlow. I've seen Uranus and Neptune! But I also know they would have been brighter in a bigger scope and my son is developing aperture fever. But dead easy to carry in two modest bags I found on Amazon, so truly grab and go. I guess you need to think how you will be using the scope - how transportable it should be, how much work you want to put into finding things manually versus goto, and if you want it to just latch onto and follow whatever you find, especially if most viewing is done under city skies. My next scope meets all the needs my first scope has highlighted in use and will be a 12 inch Starsense on an equatorial platform, though we'll need to move house to find the space for it. Just don't tell my wife.

Can you get the Moon in sharp focus? If so, using a low powered eyepiece (if you have one that came it - ie higher focal length e.g. 20mm rather than 4mm) start with that then without changing the focus or the eyepiece, move the scope to something like Jupiter (currently quite close to the Moon and very easy to see as it's so bright). You'll see a much smaller circle - and with a bit of luck up to four pinpricks of light lined up in a row next to it - its four moons. Then keeping the lens the same, move to a cluster like the Pleiades that's easy to find with the naked eye - you'll see a load of individual stars, each of which is a pinprick. And no mirror vanes. That's what you should be seeing if your scope is perfectly focussed, at any rate. If you move up to a higher lens and it goes out of focus, do the same again - start with the Moon in focus. If the Moon is in focus, anything else in the sky will also be, as long as you don't change the eyepiece.

Probably two approaches in the circa £500 plus mobile app bracket for starting out with little or no prior knowledge of the sky: 1. goto - examples Skywatcher Star Discovery P150i or Skywatcher Heritage 150 virtuoso GTI. The former is a bit more expensive but comes on a tripod and doesn't need to be stood on a table or to be collimated so no need to buy a collimating device. The Synscan app allows you to control it wirelessly with an Android or Iphone and point it at selected objects on a list. You can also linke Synscan to a third party app like Stellarium or Sky safari and click on objects shown on those apps' star maps and the scope will point itself there. Once located on an object it will keep tracking it automatically so it stays in the eyepiece as the earth rotates, avoiding the need to keep nudging the scope. 2. pushto - example the Celestron Starsense models, which you clip your phone to. The phone camera takes in whatever part of the night sky the scope is pointing to and the app overlays on the screen what it's looking at. By moving the scope to centre an object of interest on your phone screen that object will be in the centre of the eyepiece. But a few minutes later you'll have to nudge the scope as it will have rotated away with the Earth's rotation, and the more powerful the lens, the faster it will drift out of sight. An 8 inch will gather more light and feint objects will be easier and clearer to see than the 6 inch but is bulkier to carry around and in the example above is more expensive. Many of those using the Starsense app seem to think it's a game changer. Worth pointing out that you might want to also add in a Barlow lens, maybe a zoom lens, perhaps a carry bag, warm gloves, spirit level, extra batteries etc, and that can bump the price up. There are also free apps such as Astrohopper and SkEye cam that attempt to use smartphone sensors to work out where in the sky the phone is pointing, so if you were brave and enjoy tinkering you could potentially get a larger or cheaper telescope and play around with these, but Starsense seems to be a proven, simple and effective tool (and comes at a price premium as a result). I recently got the Discovery 150 to learn my way around the sky with my children and we are really enjoying it, including getting some fantastic view of Saturn and Jupiter up to 250x, the Andromeda galaxy and lots of star clusters. I was tempted by the Starsense but after trying out a few Dobs at a meet for me tracking was a greater priority than a slightly more light gathering. Your mileage may vary.

Chipping in here as a noob....I got a cheap 2x Barlow and a 6mm eyepiece for my 150/750 Skywatcher and chanced upon a still cloudless moonless night in a Bortle 4 area a couple of weeks ago (the first proper one in six months...) I was stunned at how much brighter Jupiter and Saturn were compared to what I'd been expecting to see at 250x magnification, and they completely blew out the image when I tried to capture it on my smartphone (just crudely through the eyepiece). It left me wondering if I need to rock the boat a bit and get a more powerful Barlow. Is 3x (375 magnification) overkill or should I live dangerously and look for a 4x or even 5x?

Can you hire a scope in the place you are visiting?

Did you use the same eyepiece for Moon and Venus? If you changed eyepieces it could well mean focus needs adjusting. But if the Moon is crisp and you can see sharp craters you should also see a sharp Venus if you change nothing besides what the Moon is pointing at. In fact if Im struggling to focus on something like Mars that being a small fuzzy ball can be tricky to focus, I will first point at a nearby star and get that sharp. If I defocus significantly on a bright star I get a similar image to your first image with my 150mm four vane reflector. As noted above, what your eye focuses correctly is key, your phone could be looking at anything in the tube and trying to focus on it.

Can't speak for Apple but I have that mount amd no problem controlling it with my Amdroid phone. Would have thought any phone with the minimum Amdroid version would work, doesn't need a mobile phone signal and connects very easily by WiFi (I do wonder how that would go down at a meet with more than one user though!) The phone AFAIU just calculates,what the scope is pointing at and knows,how far to move to the next location. Only downside is the lack of physical buttons when using a touchscreen as you have to place your finger more carefully. But you can adjust the speed it moves in response.

Wish I'd known about the bug in 2.3.5 - my first long trip with my recent Goto reflector to a reasonably dark sky was somewhat ruined by being completely unable to get the Goto to work as the lists were empty of any stars! But I found the landscape orientation is actually quite helpful to having a Goto reflector - if I turn my phone to one of the tow possible landscape ways up, clicking the movement buttons moves the image in the eyepiece in the same direction, ie hit the right button and everything moves right in the eyepiece (though the telescope itself is obviously not moving in that direction). Very handy when trying to centre something, provided the Goto works to get you there in the first place!.

Assuming it is "standalone" rather than mounted to the telescope itself, Amazon has loads of inexpensive tablet holders that either attach to a tripod or in some cases come complete with a tripod - musicians would use them to hold sheet music at arms' length.

I get the impression Skysafari has extra bells and whistles around social media though I'm not that interested to know if 25 other people are trying to find the same feint fuzzy galaxy as me. So if not that, what if anything does one have that the other doesn't? Thinking in terms of mimicking eyepiece views, controlling GOTO scopes etc. At the moment Stellarium is cheaper but both require purchase to unlock advanced features and I cant find any list comparing the advanced feature of both head to head?.

It does sound a rather wonderful concept. But if it's not a stupid question, I live in a Bortle 8 area and can barely even see Polaris with my naked eye after I've been out in the centre of the local park for half an hour. Are mobile phone cameras sensitive enough for the few stars visible under such conditions to the naked eye to be visible enough to the phone for the software to work?