Joseki

Hi, good luck with your scope - & rather than worry you got a lemon be pleased you didn't get one of the nightmare toy telescopes that pop up in various popular supermarkets or toy shops As well as posting on this forum (e.g. photos and "where does this bit go?" etc) you might want to get in touch with York astro society. They have public events and if you turned up with it I reckon you'd have a good chance that someone would be happy to give you some hands on demonstrations. Also, they may be able to help you get the mirrors into proper alignment - which it probably needs. http://yorkastro.org.uk/events/

I just bought the Canon 50mm f1.8 stm prime, £95 (new). Used 50mm f1.8 II lens (previous model, same optics I believe) sell for around £50 on ebay. I considered an old M42 lens but the Canon has the benefit of easiest day time use which I also want to use it for. The Canon 70-200 F4 L lens is apparently good for astro but pricey.

A 3d printed back sounds smart Good luck with the twiddling

Thanks - yes I want it mainly for lunar and white light solar (and if it seems okay I'll get it a camera tripod so I can keep it handy) - and the zoom ep it came with was rubbish. I've just had a go with the projection, though it's not something I've done before. I shone a bright desk lamp down it and used 20mm and 32mm plossl eps, with some thin paper wrapped over the top of the ep to form a screen - it looked pretty circular I'm afraid. Did you try it before removing the prism? also, does flexing the cardboard adapter make any difference? btw I may borrow your adapter idea - I think maybe I could make something cheap and usable with discs of plywood.

Wish I'd seen your thread a couple of days ago - I've got a Acuter Mak-70 (C70 clone) - from astroboot ~£30 - though it came without the 1.25" adapter. I bought my own 1.25" adapter but the threads were wrong. Given a need to keep total spend on improving it down to a sensible level I took it apart (stripped off the rubber seal & removed the back like you). With the back off (and the protective glass removed) I super-glued the 1.25" adapter I had to the original back keeping it away from the optics until teh glue had dried (I'm leaving the prism in place at the moment, pending tests). - seems to be strong enough and nicely square. The other mod I did was to slice off a rectangle of the rubber sheath and super-glue on to the plastic body a SW quick release finder bracket. - okay I guess I should upload a pic. edit:

Thanks for sharing that, I'm going to try superimposing it on my own images, so very much appreciated.

here's the baby sister (arrived this week). yes that's a diy solar finder attached to the ota (total cost £0). I also drilled and tapped the rings to attach to a standard skywatcher dovetail I already had (which means I can piggyback it on my 100ed). I wonder when I'll snap and buy the sol-searcher.