Gomtuu

I complained to Plymouth City Council when they replaced the sodium one outside my property with an LED one (I had a filter for the sodium one) and asked for a shield to be fitted.
To their credit, they didn't even question it and fitted one immediately. That said, I told them it was because it was shining directly into my bedroom, rather than for astronomy.

Liking it!

Like the 99p part.... Don't like the expensive camera part. Does anybody else know of a cheaper suitable camera that would work?

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk HD

I used this mod rather than a webcam :

http://www.eastmidlandsstargazers.org.uk/topic/4108-right-angle-polar-scope-viewer/

You need to source a Nikon DR3 lens though.

No, not SGL. I was talking about the link in the quote : http://www.skysthelimit.org.uk/ .

It seems that AdBlock Plus is the culprit on FF. It blocks the product listings.

What......SGL......if so it works ok for me with FF (23.0.1)

No, not SGL. I was talking about the link in the quote : http://www.skysthelimit.org.uk/ .

I've always found FLO to be excellent. Also, Harrison Telescopes http://www.harrisontelescopes.co.uk/

I always recommend Skies the limit, excellent customer service and returns policy and he wont be beaten on price. http://www.skysthelimit.org.uk/

Don't know if it's just me, but this site doesn't seem to work on Firefox (23.0.1).

I like this site, although there are two things I find annoying.

1) I can't edit until I reach 250 posts. Fine, I'll just use extra posts to correct myself and I'll get to 250 quicker!

2) The bulk of threads seem to go in the general beginners section. I'd suggest they need to be moderated into the correct forums more often, otherwise nobody visits those areas and posts put in the correct area are thus ignored.

Otherwise, great site and the best astronomy forum I've found!

http://www.iceinspac...ad.php?t=101398

Interesting link, thanks.

How important is an accurate home position?

Well, I'd say starting from the home position is fairly important, or the alignment won't work. Can't remember how I originally did it, but once I determined home, I made some small marks on the scope so I could set the position manually if needed. It's the alignment process which fine tunes the accuracy, but starting from an accurate home will definitely help.

I see that firmware 3.32 has been withdrawn due to polar alignment issues. Has anybody tried 3.34?

Thankyou. I have just had a frustrating time failing to get my new goto working. I'm happy I got the date, latitude etc correct. I manually slewed to Jupiter, but then when it came to find the first star the scope went off in a crazy direction, far from the stars I was asking it to go to. I tried it several times with different stars and with 2 stars rather than Jupiter but it did the same each time.

I am using rechargable batteries - could this really have such an effect? Also I didn't use a spirit level - again is this vital?

I'm a bit perturbed that I'm going to have to go through this each time I use the scope! I thought if I aligned it once that was all that was needed.

At least I got to see Jupiter

I had GOTO problems initially, mainly caused by setting the time incorrectly. I found it easier to stick to GMT than use the handset to allow for DST/BST.

If your mount has a built in spirit level, get it level indoors and mark where the bubble is on the spirit level. This will make it easier and quicker to set up the mount outdoors and get it level.

For just observing, roughly level the mount, point the polarscope at Polaris using the alt/az bolts and then starting from the main scope's parked position do a quick 1 or 2 star alignment. I find that's good enough for looking at stars/galaxies.

NB Did you manually go to Jupiter then tell it to align? I think it would have incorrectly assumed that pointing at Jupiter was the parked position, so you'd be miles out on any alignment after that.

The newest version of synscan EQ firmware has a polar align feature that takes some of the hassle and need for absolute accuracy out of the set-up procedure, its still beta test at the moment but good things are being said of it.

There's a thread here http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/143844-synscan-328-beta-polar-re-alignment-feature/, but there seem to be some issues with it currently, so I'd wait until it's out of beta.

It's easy to say the manuals are not that bad when you're looking at them with the hindsight of experience. You should see them through the eyes of a noob!

I think the biggest problem with the Skywatcher SynScan is the appalling manual.

I couldn't agree more. The biggest frustration with my new telescope (apart from the lack of clear skies!) has been the poor quality of the manuals. When I found out what I was doing wrong in various situations, it turned out to be really simple things, if only the manual had made it clear.