RobertI

Interesting snd very contrasting sketches @Nik271 and @John. What I saw was closer to Nick’s than John’s, but reading the other comments in this thread about how difficult it is to see these cloud features, I’m wondering what I saw now!

I quite like the look of the solution involving a telrad riser with cut down diagonal. Might give it a go.

Nice result Nik. 👍 I think I may also have spotted some cloud patterning last night. I used my binoviewers in the 102ED at around 160x while the sky was still glowing after sunset. I couldn’t see any cloud detail and Venus was really bright, but I happened to have an OIII filter to hand, and this darkened Venus considerably and I’m pretty sure I could then see some subtle darkened patches on the disc along the terminator. I did a lot of fiddling with different filters without much success, but always got the same result with the OIII, so I don’t think it was an illusion.

We wait with baited breath….

A wonderful piece of engineering Peter, looks to be in pretty good condition, it must give wonderful views. Great news that it’s back in the fold. How did it feel to see it again?

Excellent video - well done on your perseverance!

There are also a number of small planetary nebulae that are very bright, such as the Catseye Nebula, the Blinking Planetary and the Eskimo Neb as already mentioned. Easy to see, but not always so easy to find!

That looks very much like the dob mount that comes with the Heritage 130P, if so, it’s actually a pretty heavy and sturdy mount.

Always jealous when I see your T-Rex John. 🙂

Excellent, look forward to hearing what you think. As far as the scope itself goes, I was actually quite impressed at the f10 70mm achro once a decent but lightweight eyepiece was added - I didn’t give it a compete test, but I saw some pretty challenging stuff with it. The real weakness is the mount as always, but should be a great intro for your granddaughter, and of course, it looks like a real telescope should look!

Another interesting approach. Presumably this wouldn’t be available on iOS or Android?

Thanks for the details, sounds like it works pretty well. M44 and M81 are about 50 degrees apart so that’s pretty good accuracy across a fairly big slew. I’m guessing that the larger the slew the less accurate it becomes without re-synching to something. Just curious to understand how this all works. As the Starsense app effectively auto re-synchs itself every time you slew to something, no manual re-synching is required, but Starsense does have its limitations (eg, bright moon) and obviously can’t be used during the day. Its interesting to understand the difference between the two approaches though - I might try both apps side by side one day as an experiment.

A quick dash out tonight with the 102EDR fitted with the new Starsense phone module. Despite a bright moon the Starsense app worked flawlessly, guiding me round some lovely doubles in Hercules. Starsense seems very good in these conditions, as star hopping is tricky under the bright moon especially with a RDF. Anyway, using a 17.5mm Morpheus at 40x, I bagged the following: 100 Hercules - a pretty pair of equal magnitude white stars separated by 14” 95 Hercules - very similar to the above but slightly brighter and half the separation Alpha Hercules - lovely bright yellow primary with a magnitude 5 companion 5” away Delta Hercules - a bright primary with an tiny eighth magnitude secondary 12” away Rho Hercules - two fifth magnitude stars separated by 4” I also managed to squeeze in a couple of carbon stars, but they were faint and underwhelming in the conditions.

Sadly I don’t think so Paz, when you try and use the Starsense app during the day, it says “It’s daytime, please use Starsense at night!”. Polite though. 🙂

I also have PS Align Pro and was just going to start using it for push to before I was seduced by Starsense. Just out of interest, do you use the ‘hop from nearest star’ feature or do you find it works accurately without?

My understanding is that Starsense has had three incarnations; the first was the Skyprodigy scopes (no longer available) where the camera was built into the mount and not the scope; the second was the separate starsense camera which can be mounted on any scope and is connected to the mount, and the third was the current starsense app ‘push-to’ solution. My recollection is that the SkyProdigy mounts were not that well received - I’m not sure why, but I have an old one and it is temperamental - when it works it’s great and the alignment is reasonably good, but sometimes it just fails to self-align. The concept of the camera being in the mount, is not the best to be honest and it also has a pitiful database. I think the Sky Prodigy mounts gave Starsense a bad name for a long while, but latest incarnation is wonderful, albeit a push-to solution. I think it’s only a matter of time before the Starsense app can control the mount too, rendering the current Starsense camera/handset product redundant.

It will be interesting to see what they come up with there, and also interesting to understand how restrictive Celestron’s patents are in this area (I did some research here out of idle curiosity, but by no means comprehensive).

The other thing to note about the starsense app is the wonderful way they have executed it. As you follow the bright orange chevrons to move closer to the object, it automatically zooms in, and then changes colour when you have arrived, based on the gyro movements. Because the gyros are not completely reliable, It then does a plate solve and moves the target to reflect how far away you actually are and you can home in exactly. Sometimes it is initially slightly off, but if moving a long way across the sky it can be a long way off, so the platesolve seems essential for that final accurate homing in. You can also move the scope around the sky and the planetarium will show you where you are pointing, displaying the brighter objects just like Sky safari does. You can then tap the object and it will guide you there. Brilliant.

Something to note - you have to enter your email address when entering the code -I don’t know if the code gets tied to the email address somehow (perhaps the first time you enter it?), or whether you can enter any email address, so you might end up having to use the email address of the original purchaser. Might be worth checking with them.

Perfect, everything the keen astronomer needs, premium refractor and mount, spacious 4x4, and floppy hat. 🙂

I just bought myself a Celestron Starsense Explorer 70LT - basically a cheap achro refractor with an attachment for your mobile phone, allowing you to use Celestron’s Starsense technology via an app on your phone to find objects. I’ve just been out for a couple of hours, and I’ll cut to the chase - it’s just brilliant. It made finding objects so easy, that I almost felt I was cheating. Suffice it to say that with my cheap 70mm achro made mostly of plastic, within the space of a few minutes I had found and observed globulars M13 and M3, galaxies M81, M82, planetaries NGC6543 (the Cats Eye nebula) and NGC6826 (the Blinking Planetary), the Eastern Veil (kind of), and open cluster M39. Each time I searched, Starsense did its thing, guiding me to the object with helpful arrows, taking an image to platesolve when it senses the telescope has stopped moving, and guiding me the final few minutes of arc the object - every single time the object was clearly in the field of view of a 66 degree 20mm eyepiece at 35x magnification, giving a FOV of 1.9 degrees. I should add that there was a bright moon in the sky, but I kept well away and everything worked fine. If I wanted to move around the garden to get a better view, no problem, Starsense was unaffected - this was weird for someone who has been used to not touching a tripod once a mount is aligned. As for the scope itself, the mount is very wobbly and the eyepieces leave a lot to be desired, but when I added a decent-ish WO 20mm eyepiece (a lightweight eyepiece was needed and this fitted the bill) the views improved dramatically and the scope produced some really nice views. I think the correct image diagonal also helped to make the experience seem easy. There are a number of other scopes, including newts and SCTs, but they all seem to live on wobbly mounts and tripods which is a shame. The exceptions are the 8” and 10” dobs which look like perfect companions for starsense. Definitely a success and I will be looking at how to convert this for use on my other scopes. 👍

From my memory on the Cloudy Nights forum, Celestron’s response was that they wanted to keep the solution as foolproof as possible and selling it separately for attaching to any scope would introduce more potential for going wrong, which I totally understand. They did say they monitor the situation and wouldn’t rule it out in the future. That’s me paraphrasing by the way , I think I got the gist of it.

TBH with those results I don’t think you need a reducer or flattener! Keep up the good work. 👍

I’ll probably adapt it to my 102ED-R to start with then my C8. I don’t have a Stella Lyra dob …..yet! 🙂 I’ll probably try the approach of fitting it to a ball head so it can be oriented, therefore does not have to sit on the top of the OTA, and fit to a standard finder shoe bracket.

I’ve literally just done it! A 70mm Explorer frac is on the way! Of course I justified it by promising the scope to my 8 year old (after its separation from Starsense of course). 😀