RobertI

Exciting times! 

50 minutes ago, bosun21 said:

For the life of me I couldn't get it to recognise the sky. I'm not too bothered at the minute as it has worked flawlessly since I stripped it off of an LT70 .

Did you it getting working ok again? I had a similar problem, but realised I had the  time and location set to my holiday destination in Turkey, and it worked fine after that. I did have one issue last time out where it failed to find stars pointing towards the square of Pegasus, but was fine everywhere else, which was weird, as it’s been 100% reliable apart from that, even in moonlight. But pointing the scope in a slightly different direction picked up stars and allowed me to navigate to my target. 

5 hours ago, Sunshine said:

You all may have heard me gush here on SGL about how awesome Starsense is, there are many who have stripped the module off the most inexpensive Celestron units and easily adapted them to larger dobs and such. Starsense is just plain awesome, best thing to come along in amateur astronomy since the eyepiece 😄

Couldn’t agree more! It seems to be a situation where three technologies (mobile phone, Starsense and SkySafari) just work so well together and result in a simple to use product that maximises observing time and minimises hassle (at least for those with compatible phones!) whilst retaining the simplicity and “purity” of manual observing. I’m starting to sound like the Celestron marketing department! 😆

2 hours ago, paulastro said:

 Previously I have tried  Starsense with the C5 on my AZ4 and a Scoptech Mount Zero.  Both these worked,  but neither was the most user friendly setup.

I've now managed to set it up on the AZ5 and this is much better, to the degree it's going away with me to a visit to a an astonomer friend of mine in the Midlands shortly.

Previous difficulties were to do mainly with the designe of the other mounts and the fact that the finder foot on the C5 is not convenient for fitting to single forks which need the scope  to be attached to the right of the fork, as seen from behind.

The photos are hopefully self explanatory.  The first pic is of my spare phone holder with an orange 3D printed adapter to fit its base to a Vixen finder foot, two different designs of multi-finder holders I used and the Celestron 30mm finder.  The other pics are from different angles to show how it is all fitted together.  The tripod is an Artcise AS88C CF tripod.

The rig is very secure, no skakes or rattles and it's easy to use and smooth in use.

 

 

 

That’s a neat looking solution. A fortunate coincidence that the angle of the finder shoe on the OTA and the angle of the multi-finder shoe produce a horizontal result??

33 minutes ago, Knighty2112 said:

Well blow me down! Just found one on sale on fleebay! 👍🏻

Is the eBay supplier making them to order or is it a one off? If the former, can you post a link? Thanks. (Sorry OP for diverting thread 🙏)

14 hours ago, Timbo1001 said:

What phone are you using because I'm having issues with my supposedly compatible Samsung A40? Cheers.

It’s an iPhone 12, and seems to be working, ok at the moment, although it seemed to have trouble recognising any stars in the square of Pegasus the other day, everywhere else was fine 

14 minutes ago, powerlord said:

Haw wood ones stopped, so they are looking for a new organiser afaik:

http://www.brecklandastro.org.uk/star-parties/?doing_wp_cron=1694414752.7969698905944824218750

Oh that’s odd, they were still running one in November when I spoke to them a few weeks ago. 

Why do stars look so colourful with binoculars? Just been out for a quick session with the 10x50s, and as always, astounded by the beauty of heavens through binoculars. Open clusters in Perseus and Cassiopeia, colourful doubles everywhere, asterisms, galaxies in Andromeda and Triangulum. And all in the time it would have taken me to set up my “grab and go” setup! 

14 hours ago, cajen2 said:

4. There were vibrations at higher mags when focusing, which I'd expected as my scope is quite long and approaching the mount's payload capacity. These dampened very quickly, however, and didn't cause me any undue difficulty.

Just out of interest, do you think the pillar extension increases the vibration? Im wondering how it would perform if bolted directly to my 1.75” steel tripod for example. 

23 hours ago, JeremyS said:

Good point John. My little beauty. 

If I had one of these beauties, it would be on show in a cabinet on my wall, so I could admire it in between sessions! 🙂. 

23 hours ago, JeremyS said:

Good point John. My little beauty. 

Wonderful, that’s an awesome picture, hope you continue to get plenty of dark skies. I expect to be remembering you with envy as I huddle under my £130 paper thin tent at Kelling in a few weeks! 🙂

15 minutes ago, NGC 1502 said:

There’s the Orwell Astronomical Society near Ipswich, maybe not too far away if you have a car?

Or how about Clacton and District Astronomical Society?

Wishing you all the very best in your recovery👍

Ed.

Thank you. Yes I am planning on going to the Clacton Club as they were very supportive and inspiring when I was a teenager. Time to pay back I think. 🙂

33 minutes ago, IB20 said:

Jupiter, my favourite of all targets, is coming in to view. I told myself not to look at it until it’s in a better position later in the year. Well that lasted all of 5 minutes. 
The versatility of a refractor on a higher tripod compared to a low down dob has made it easy to get it in view. I honestly don’t know what to say, it is just the most beautiful sight. The GRS is just rotating into view and is clear as day. The banding is sensational. The Galilean moons are just huge, with lovely airy disks.

I am a complete and utter 4” refractor convert. This is turning out to be the best night ever. 

Superb, stay out as long as you can!   

2 hours ago, Zermelo said:

With iOS, I understand its possible to redden the screen in the operating system

Yes, that’s correct, I do this in addition to the night mode in SS - I think it’s set up in Accessibility options and activated with a triple click of the on/off button. It’s necessary as the iPhone has a bright white bar which sometimes appears at the bottom of the screen which needs reddening, and as you say, for using other apps.

For Celestron mounts you can buy the SkyFi Portal dongle and use the Sky Portal app or SkySafari to do the initial alignment, find objects, slew and nudge. So I think you would have everything you need. You can set the display to night mode and dim it, and it doesn’t affect night vision too much. I’ve never tried in a really dark sky site though. I am guessing for Skywatcher there is a similar wireless dingle solution. 

Lovely report, very poetic!

7 hours ago, sojourneyer said:

That is a boat load of tools to use.   I would not be able to keep track of them..LOL

That’s the beauty of SkySafari, it makes it all so easy! But I understand it might be too much for many folk 🙂

11 minutes ago, sojourneyer said:

why would you be running sky safari if you have the Starsense app?

Good question, the main reason is that I have a whole load of observing lists in SS that I have acquired over time (best NGCs, Herschel 400, coloured doubles, etc) and I want to be able to use these. I also enter observing reports for objects into SS sometimes. It’s my main observing planner, so being able to use it with Starsense was a godsend. 

Ah, I think I have just solved my problem, I had still SkySafari set to the location of my recent holiday destination in Turkey, so the time and lat/long would have been wrong and possibly confused the Starsense. I’ll check next time I’m out but 99% sure this is the issue. 

I don’t know if anyone else has experienced this issue. I’ve been successfully using Starsense on my iPhone 12 for a few weeks. Recently I enabled Starsense in SkySafari 7 Pro and it worked well, but the last two times out it has been failing to find objects with the message “failed to find telescope position”. It aligns fine to start with and shows an image of the sky, but then in use, it fails with the above message. When switching over to the Starsense App it works fine, but then back to SkySafari, and it fails. I’ve tried removing all apps in memory apart from SS, but same problem. Anyone any ideas? I know in theory it’s the same code for both apps so both should work or both should fail. Any thoughts appreciated.

34 minutes ago, josefk said:

Is that on all night @RobertI? i'm not Victor Mildrew but that has got to be worth a letter of constructive criticism pointing out how ludicrous it is in an AONB on grounds of disturbance to wildlife, natural enjoyment of the landscape and profligate squandering of energy resources...

There is actually a campaign in progress and the local council have started an enforcement “process” as it looks like planning laws have been broken, so that’s good news, but it won’t be quick. 

12 hours ago, RobertI said:

That is great to hear. Of course it’s not just roads - Network Rail have created a new car park near me with completely over the top lighting in an AONB…..  

 

Sorry, I know this thread is covering a lot of different ground, but just illustrate the above I took a picture of the station last night, and compare below with what it looks like during the day. If planning laws can allow this to happen in a rural setting, then there is little hope. 🫤

4 hours ago, lawsio said:

Just on the light pollution issue, I'm a Civil Engineer specialising in Highways and many of the Local Authorities around the UK I work with are enforcing Dark Skies policies on new roads now, with roads only to being lit where it would pose a safety risk should they not be, for example crossing locations and certain junction types. It's part of a wider 'future ready/net zero' initiative to reduce carbon, ongoing costs, impact on wildlife, etc so I'd be lying if I said it was specifically to benefit ammeter astronomers, but hopefully in time the more of these policies get taken up, maybe some existing older street lights get taken down rather than replaced and skies might gradually start to darken again. Maybe.

That is great to hear. Of course it’s not just roads - Network Rail have created a new car park near me with completely over the top lighting in an AONB…..  

I know the Astrotrac 360 has been available for around three years now, but there seems to be very little discussion on the mount and there is virtually no stock available from the major astro retailers. Plus the Astrotrac website is showing all the signs of not being maintained anymore. I wonder what’s going on?