Lung

Thanks all. I think it's worth trying some dessicant I reckon, or trying to draw it out via capillary action (which I tried yesterday but not for very long). It's also some way from the middle of the lens so I can probably live with it for the time being while I learn the astronomy ropes.

I dismantled my Tal 25mm Plossl eyepiece to clean it as it was filthy,  but some demin water seems to have got inside the front lens pair. Will it dry out over time, or can I split the lens to dry it out?

Is the accessory L bracket that it came with not a viable solution then? Does moving the mount from the side to the bottom mess up the coordinate system or something?

43 minutes ago, Zermelo said:

Do you know which mount it is?

With some of the SW mounts, you can flash the controller with a different version of the software, to switch between left and right hand operation.

It's the Synscan Star Discovery, with handset rather than WiFi.

4 hours ago, Cosmic Geoff said:

Yes, that's what the adapter on the almost identical Celestron 127 Mak looks like.

You just need a 90 degree star diagonal - lots of choice there. I found that the diagonal that came with the scope worked just fine, so no need to spend a lot of money.  I had to buy a good quality 10mm eyepiece (£50+) to get the best out of the scope.

You definitely don't need a Barlow with a Maksutov of focal length 1500 mm.

You will also need a finderscope of some sort. It will mount onto the Synta finder bracket visible in your photo.

I wouldn't bother with a 2" adapter and eyepieces.  They cost more and the scope does not have a big hole in the rear.

Do you have a suitable mount for the Mak?

Thanks, I'll look for the stock diagonal on eBay or similar. It came with a red dot finder, plus the goto mount and tripod, although it's the wrong tube for the mount (I've put a post in the scopes forum about that).

3 hours ago, Don Pensack said:

I owned this scope for several years.  It is actually a 121mm f/12.7 Maksutov with a 1540mm focal length.  It's been made by Synta since around 2000-2001 and maybe before in non-USA markets,

and sold under at least 10 different marks (like Orion, Celestron, SkyWatcher, etc.)

It's actually 121mm in clear aperture because Maks need an oversized mirror to field the entire corrector's light, and they did not use an oversized mirror.

The Sky & Telescope test many years ago confirmed that.

When I had mine, I used it primarily for Moon, Planets, double stars and smaller star clusters.

 

The maximum field with 1.25" eyepieces is 1.04°, using a Baader 24mm Hyperion eyepiece.

The APM Ultra Flat Field 24mm (also available as Stellalyra and Altair Astro UFF in the UK) yields a 1.03° field.

A 32mm Plössl as a low power will yield 1.00° field.

The visual back that holds the diagonal has 10mm of useless thread on its outer end.  If you machine this off, the focal length of the scope with a 1.25" diagonal drops to ~1510mm.

This gains you so little in true field that it's hardly worth it unless you have the machine tools to do it.

 

An eyepiece set that is usable in the scope could start with the 24mm Hyperion, but also could start with a 32mm Plössl if you want a larger exit pupil.

From 32mm, the logical steps are 32mm, 22-23mm, 16mm, 11-12mm, 8mm

From 24mm, the logical steps are 24mm, 17mm, 12-12.5mm, 8.5-9mm.

The scopes generally don't perform great above 200x, for many reasons, which is a 7.7mm eyepiece.

 

If you get fantastically good seeing, the scope can give decent images with 6-7mm eyepieces, but I think it's more cost-effective to use a Barlow to achieve magnifications above 190x or so.

You need a finder scope, for sure, and a dewshield on the front of the scope (this can be home-made), or your observing sessions will be cut short by dewing of the corrector.

You also need a nice steady mount.  Due to the long focal length, look for a mount that can handle a 5" refractor.  Even though the Mak is lighter and shorter, vibration in the mount is more visible

due to the long focal length and large image scale.

That's a lot of info, thanks for that! I had a quick look at the suggested eyepieces and the 24mm options are a bit pricey for now but the 32mm Plossl looks like a good option to start along with my Tal 25mm and 10mm.

The scope came with a dewshield and red dot, so that's sorted. It also has the goto mount, skyscan handset and tripod.

A friend of mine died recently and left me his hardly used Skymax 127. His sister gave it to me yesterday and I've discovered the OTA is the wrong one for the mount. It came with the black Goto but with skyscan controller, but the OTA is the one you get if you buy it on its own. This means that if I fit the tube to the mount, the red dot finder is underneath the tube.

There is an L accessory bracket that I can put on the mount, and then attach the tube to so that the dovetail is at the very bottom of the tube but I don't know if moving the mount 90 degrees will have any impact on using SkyScan etc.

Is the L bracket sufficient to use the full setup properly, or do I need to do something else to get it working correctly?

57 minutes ago, Carbon Brush said:

The '127 Mak is generally tolerant of eyepiece type.
I think first thing is to establish that the eyepiece/diagonal adapter, which screws in, is still there.
If you post a picture of the arrangement, that will guide your next move.

HTH, David.
 

Adapter looks to be present.

A friend of mine died recently and left me his hardly used Skymax 127. His sister very kindly gave it to me yesterday, but the diagonal, Barlow and eyepieces were missing. Rather than bothering her or his mum to find them for me, I wondered what replacements might be worth getting instead? I have a Tal M scope that I'm renovating that has a 25mm Plossl and 15mm Kelner eyepiece set that I think I could use if I bought a diagonal. Other than those, what would people recommend? Is it worth going for a 2" adapter and eyepieces instead?

I'm brand new to astronomy and bought a Tal M off Facebook for £50. It needs a bit of TLC so I've fully stripped it down and will slowly put it back together.

After everyone's fantastic input to my thread I thought I'd post a quick update.

Just after my last post in here I was chatting to a friend about getting into astronomy and he offered to give me his scope as he'd bought it a year or two before but due to ill health had only used it once or twice then consigned it to a cupboard. He couldn't remember brand or type so promised to dig it out and have a look. A few days later he told me it was a Skymax 127 on AZ GTI mount. Perfect! Unfortunately, he had also had to go into a hospice due to his health, and a few days later died.

I have no interest in bothering his family for his telescope so if they decide to give it to me later then great, but in the meantime I found a Tal M on Facebook and couldn't resist for £50. It came in the wooden box and all accessories were present, so it seemed a good idea. I've now stripped it fully and am in the process of refurbishing it.

Some pics:

4 hours ago, Cosmic Geoff said:

I am not clear what your objection is. If you buy this and decide you don't like the tripod, you will then have to buy a different mount and tripod and attach the OTA to it via the standard dovetail.

No objection, just wondering whether I can simply swap out the tripod in the Astro-Fi bundle for something more sturdy if I find the included one too wobbly,.but keep the Goto mount and OTA.

2 hours ago, Elp said:

If you've got the space and budget for it, the Skywatcher thick section steel tripod makes for a good investment, I've since moved on from it but it was quite solid. Wood and certain carbon fibre tripods work well but cost more. If you've got the facility to do so, a permanent pier (or a DIY one) to mount onto will be best.

I don't think the Astro Fi (or Synscan) will fit on that steel tripod as it has the flat topped connection with 3/8 bolt.

I'm having a quick look at tripod options for the Celestron Astro Fi 127, but the base of the mount seems to rule out everything. Can anyone suggest a tripod that would work with the mount, or a modification that could sort it?

40 minutes ago, Mandy D said:

@Lung Some of the package deals of Skymax, mount and tripod do not use the same OTA as the one that you buy separately. When they are this cheap, it is worth checking whether the telescope has the facility to be collimated, if that is important to you. Don't let it, necessarily, put you off it cannot be re-collimated as they tend to hold collimation very well. But, it is something you should know before pulling the trigger on this. Ask the question.

I think the OTA varies by region. I've just checked 5 UK vendors and the OTA appears to be the same as supplied on the AZ GTI and EQ3-2 mounts at least, but i think in other markets the 127 OTA comes with 2" diagonal and eyepieces.

5 hours ago, Cosmic Geoff said:

For £300?  Why is it so cheap?  Looks like you would be getting the same OTA as mine, plus a free mount.   Good OTA, basically the same as the Skywatcher 127 Mak.

I seem to recall the 6" SCT astro fi being offered at such  low price that one was effectively getting the OTA + a free mount.

No idea, it's brand new from a photography store. From what I can see it's the identical scope to the Skymax, just with a different mount and tripod and almost half the price. It's the one I'm very close to pulling the trigger on as I can buy the AZ GTI later and still be on the same total cost as the Skymax with GTI but I'll have the Astro Fi mount too.

No love for the Astro Fi at such a low price? Poor little Celestron 😆

I'm back to deciding which Mak to buy. It feels like the main options are:

Celestron Astro Fi 127 at £300

Skymax 127 EQ3-2 at £440

Skymax 127 AZ GTI at £550

I'm including the EQ3-2 mount because if I do want to go down the photography route it will need an EQ mount, so either adding a wedge and counterweight to the AZGTI or the GTI to the EQ3-2. The price ends up very close either route, but the EQ3-2 mount looks better than the adventurer wedge + weight.

The Celestron is so cheap that adding the GTI and wedge plus weights comes to the same price again, so ultimately all 3 options will ultimately end up at the same price point.

The question therefore becomes which option to go for as the entry route? The cheapest which has WiFi but zero manual option, the middle with no WiFi or altaz option but a more substantial mount, or the expensive option which has WiFi and manual control?

9 minutes ago, PeterC65 said:

I'm sure the SC001 will work and give you images, but if you go down this route you will get better images and less stress with one of the entry level astro cameras for not much more money.

The whole "which camera" story is a whole other ball game though.

 

With the astro cameras you then need either a laptop plugged into it (and therefore you stood next to it) or a mini PC/Pi strapped to the setup with all the extra bits that entails too. Svbony also do the SC311 which is an astro-focused wifi camera, and a quick google suggests many other options too. Thinking a bit more suggests you'd also need some way to run the focuser remotely, adding yet more complexity and cost.

As is usual for me, i tend to go down rabbitholes when looking into new subjects to the point i forget why I started looking in the first place. Time to park the EAA for now i think.

Here's a review of the SC001 which looks decent https://www.svbony.com/blog/sc001-camera-capturing-the-moon-and-more/

5 minutes ago, bosun21 said:

That’s a camera for daytime use with a spotting scope. I can’t see the specs for it but I highly doubt it would compete with an astro camera.

You're correct, it's was just the first example I could find, although the "test certificate" they have an image of lists it as an Astronomy camera https://www.svbony.com/sc001-wifi-spotting-scope-camera/#&gid=1&pid=5

Svbony make the SC001 camera which has it's own WiFi hotspot and should allow video capture remotely. I'm guessing there are other similar cameras.

 It feels like it shouldn't be too hard take a cheap Goto-enabled base (eg £300 Astro-Fi 127) and turn it into a DIY smart scope. If it already has some form of goto software for controlling it remotely, wouldn't it just need a camera/smartphone setup to output the image to a PC for turning the raw footage into images that can be processed? That would give a rig that can be used for visual or auto imaging depending on what circumstances allowed that night.

I watched a couple of videos on the S50 by Cuiv and he states it's absolutely not for planetary astronomy (can see Saturn's rings but barely, Jupiter and it's moons but no red spot or storms belts), but it's great for solar, lunar and DSOs.

I had discounted the Seestar due to its small aperture, and was hoping a similar kind of setup might be achievable via a WiFi mount on a 127 and streaming an image via a smartphone. I'll watch some videos of the S50.

My original post was talking about mounted binoculars but maybe that wasn't clear enough.

If it was just me I'd get some 10x50s or 15x70s and spend a few months learning the sky before buying anything else. My son in particular would lose interest rapidly with that I fear. Being able to see the rings of Saturn, even if tiny, might be just the ticket but I guess either way it's a bit of a punt.

This was another reason for heading down the tech route, as we could set up a mobile phone to take video and they could control the scope from indoors, on a screen instead of the eyepiece.

The £300 Astro Fi 127 gives room in the budget for some 10x50 Opticon Adventurer bins with tripod, so we could try both options, see which (if either) stick, and go from there.

11 minutes ago, Elp said:

A few things to consider here:

1. Have you any experience using a telescope, especially one with a relatively long focal length? The azgti is a good price to performance mount, it however starts to struggle to track at long focal lengths and using high power eyepieces (you'll need to intervene a lot to nudge it to keep a planet in view) and unless you're familiar with the skies and have a bit of patience, the goto won't be straightforward out of the box and some manual centering will be required, this is where practice comes in. The mount is fine once you get used to using it. For a beginner, I would not recommend a long focal length telescope at all though.

2. Why I don't recommend long focal length. Finding objects is difficult, planets not so much but from naked eye viewing you can normally only see Mercury if the sun isn't nearby which is pretty much most of the time, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, obviously also the moon. You can align a telescope to find these objects quite easily even manually. With goto you'll struggle to find the other outer gas giants if the scope can even resolve them well with the typical atmospheric seeing (they'll just be a coloured blurred dot). Once you've seen them a few times, are you going to keep looking at them over and over? You'll soon want to see DSO objects and this is where it starts to become cumbersome. The narrow field of view will make finding objects difficult as you'll be limited in seeing surrounding reference stars, and the azgtis goto isn't the best even when you think it's accurately aligned. I've got three scopes currently, and the short FL refractor gets the most use because it can frame a lot of the things you can see well like open star clusters, constellations and just for general sweeping the skies. For DSO searching and viewing a scope around 600-800mm FL will be better (easier and enjoyable to use) than one 1500mm (the latter comes into play with experience when you are familiar and want to see stuff in greater resolution so SCTs/Maks/RCs/newts-dobsonians start to come into play). A refractor will also be pin sharp (as will a Newtonian), I've enjoyed super sharp views of Jupiter and Saturn at 360mm FL plus a Barlow lens even though Saturn was only around 2-3mm actual size in the eyepiece. My 1500mm SCT gets used the least for visual, even Jupiter at this focal length I had a comment "is that it? It's a bit small isn't it". The value of the view comes down to the individual.

3. Are you extremely patient especially with others around you wanting to see through the scope in the freezing cold? A lot of us can spend hours in the midst of winter sitting outside with our gear, even if we struggle to find things. From my experience with others around, they want to see things straight away and expect to see what they see in images, large and lots of detail, if they're expecting this prepare to be disappointed, then they'll go in because it's "too cold". Observing takes patience, the more you look at say a planet the more your brain starts to see, especially if the seeing is not playing ball. Finding and looking at DSO objects requires a critical discerning view if it's faint, a lot of the time you have to use averted vision (using the edge of your vision, not looking directly at the object as likely they'll be invisible if looking direct, a lot of this depends on your light pollution).

From your first post you mentioned binos, did you go down this route or change tact entirely for a scope? If you intend on getting others involved I'd err towards the binos to start due to the low cost of entry and they're highly portable, a pair which can be tripod mounted because movement and vibrations will ruin the experience. If you have an astro meet or star party nearby, going to one of these will be even better before you decide on which way to go, astro owners like talking about their stuff.

Thanks very much for this post. To your points:

1. Nope, zero telescope experience (I have almsot 2 decades of microscope experience though!)

2. DSOs are largely out of the equation for the time being due to light pollution.

3. Various people in this thread (and elsewhere online) suggested binos were not the best way to go for kids, particularly as my 6yo son is a hardcore planet fan.

I do have a local astronomy club, so i'll be looking to go along to a meet when they start up again in the new year.