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/

44 minutes ago, Chris Lock said:

Cheers for the link, it's really good! I feel like I've learnt a bit obout AP with lenses just by spending 5-10 mintues reading it  

I might be best buying a fast 50mm Prime lens by the sounds of it, at least until I've got some kind of tracking sorted.

The only worry is that the modded camera I'm buying can't have been shimmed or filter replaced modded for the money I've paid, so I do need to be careful that any lens I buy which requires and adaptor reaches infinity focus. With this is mind I'll check the price of EOS prime lenses, but may just risk an M42 fitting and make sure I get an adaptor that specifies infinity focus to reduce the risk.

 

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.

Hi, just got the same email - from SCS Astro.  URL: http://www.scsastro.co.uk/M42-Optic-SARL/CCD-Cameras/i-Nova-Neb

btw, FLO only sponsor this forum and discussing other businesses and products is certainly not forbidden , neither is buying kit from elsewhere - though I buy everything I can get from FLO from them because they do great service and support.

No problem 4.2x barlow now available in the drop down

That's great, thanks

Thanks for another great freebie!

Seperate to saying thankyou for that, I did have one request though.  If it's no trouble to do so, could you add either the option to use a non-standard barlow strength, or add x4.2 as an option? - which is the strength of the Daystar Quark eyepiece.

Well neither the Met Office or COW were right last night but COW was closer. As a thought to additional stuff, perhaps a link section fir stuff like satellite images and jet stream forecasts that might be of interest to some but not worth integrating fully?

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I've bookmarked my location on my phone and added a shortcut on the phone's page - works very well, thanks again

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Looks great, thanks (and its very mobile friendly so I won't miss an app). I did wonder if it would be useful to include some info on the jet stream forecast. Also, I'd be interested in knowing how much agreement there was between the different sources (without knowing quite what you're using). I would imagine it is a balancing act between info and clarity. I might be biased though as I have a background in Meteorology.

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On the distro astro release notes page it says distro astro 2.0 uses 3.8.0 kernel, and under "did not make it" they say distro astro will switch to "a new Ubuntu 14.04 LTS base in version 3.0".

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I tried to get oacapture to work with distro astro btw but found it wasn't straight forward (for me). After installing a recent version of Ubuntu it worked fine on that. I haven't commented on my own results with it though as they're pretty disappointing which may be due to problems with using a microsoft Lifecam or my inexperience and I haven't had the chance to properly test it - perhaps tonight - especially since I've now got a windows laptop with sharp cap on to test against (that I would prefer to keep inside). The gui worked well btw other than my issues. I think distro astro is planning to move over to using Ubuntu as a base state in the future.

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Qualia, I think this is a great post, Thank you. Not only brilliant for someone who is planning to buy their first telescope but also once they have and might be wondering if they're doing it wrong or need to upgrade to a better scope in order to get the views they expected.

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Thanks for reviewing the 222, I've been watching a few on ebay lately. The tension adjust is a nice feature by the looks of it.

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Steiner 8x22 safari's - great go-anywheres - and (arrived today ) WO ED 10x50's.  Also, some brand-less BAK7 12x60's that I may not have for much longer since they don't perform very well on stars.

If the focuser moves, the mirrors are fairly well aligned, there are no additional extras in the light path and you've tried multiple eyepieces, the simplest explanation is the mirrors.  Perhaps the mirror got mixed up with a mirror for a different focal length telescope in the factory, such as http://www.harrisontelescopes.co.uk/acatalog/SkyWatcher_Explorer_130_Newtonian_Reflector_Telescope.html.  The small mirror is flat, so even if it were slightly too small it wouldn't stop you focusing.  If you're feeling like some minor DIY, why not try making a simple 25cm tube extension out of stiff card, tape it to the end of the focuser and tape the 20m eyepiece to the other end? (and you've got to keep it fairly straight whilst moving the focuser - maybe a two person job) Not very stable or useful in general but it would help check (since I'm guessing it'd be most likely to be the 900 mm focal length - standard mass produced mirrors don't come in many different varieties).  If it was out of warranty you could mess around checking the focal length more precisely (removing it from the telescope) but as it isn't I'd return it rather than give them a chance to get out of their obligations.  Of course, having hands-on input from someone with more experience is a good idea, but if (as you say) you've set it up correctly it should be just a case of finding the spot on the focuser between fully in and fully out that is in focus, which doesn't require years of experience to do.

I think it would be very unlikely to be anything to do with the mirrors fogging up (all the time, as soon as you try and use it, even in the day), but when contacting technical support it might be good to be able to say that you checked.