CraigT82

That would be a shame as you'd be wasting those wonderful dark skies! You can see the planets from literally anywhere, so if you do get something to take with you to dark skies you might want to focus on the DSOs that you'd never ever see from home.

Looks like a very well made scope, certainly looks like a proper instrument! Looks like you can collimate the tilt of the focuser with push/pull screws around the visual back?

I have collimated both with the laser and cheshire several times, and each time, after checking with the cheshire, i get rotation error och the secondary (confirmed that it is rotation) I used to get the same kind of error on my 200p when using hotech and site tube together. Basically came down to variable clamping by my cheap1.25" adapter I think. I was certain the the secondary was centred in the tube (by measuring vane lengths) and also with the centreing under the focuser by using the site tube (which may actually have been off due to tilt), however the Hotech never agreed. In the end I ditched the hotech and bought both a parallizer and a glatter tublug (which I use with a cheap laser). Now my method is to: 1) use site tube to centre the secondary under focuser and set rotation to show three primary mirror clips evenly. I never use a laser to set the secondary. 2) use tublug with laser to set primary. (The tublug has basically a fancy way of doing the barlowed laser method) Using this method has worked perfectly for my f6 and f7.4 newts. However I appreciate your fast newt will be much more demanding I guess my main point is that you need to be sure that your two collimation tools are being held in exactly the same way in the focuser. Hope you get it sorted quickly!

You say you had it set it to longest exposure in sharpcap, isnt that 1000 seconds?! You should 100% be able to get a nice bright preview on Saturn on the screen, so something definitely amiss with either the exposure settings, or the planet wasnt on the chip??

Wow that's really out of whack... must have had a very bumpy ride during delivery! Collimating SCTs is relatively easy and best done on a bright star in good seeing. If you line up the diagonal with of of the secondary screws that helps with knowing which screw to turn. The secondary screws only usually require small adjustments... turn and look, turn and look etc. Gradually getting that spot back to the centre. Your manual should tell you what you need to know but theres plenty of tutorials on youtube. Just be extra careful with Allen keys near the corrector plate!

I think a proper telescope has nothing to do with size, as even a small lens or mirror will show much more than the eye alone, and different sizes serve different purposes anyway. For me it's about the design and usability. If a 3" refractor is well made and capable of producing sharp images, has a usable focuser, finder and a mount that allows it to be pointed accurately and easily at a given target than that is a proper telescope. This is where most department store scopes fall down into the toy category.

I bought the sjywatcher white dual saddle for £29 from RVO and it fitted to my old black EQ6 a treat.

Are you using a 2" to 1.25" adaptor when putting the Cheshire in? Could be some error introduced by that if so. I always had trouble getting laser and Cheshire to agree, until I got a howie glatter parallizer and used both laser and Cheshire in that. I'm not sure how this would affect images, possibly vignetting at one side of the image?

Hi Wouter, hope you dont mind I took screenshots of your images and used the Layout app to display them side by side for easier viewing... yes I much prefer the reprocessed version, it has much more 'zing' ! Reprocess on left, original on right

If you have several videos of saturn, you can stack each one in AS and then stack the resulting single tiffs together in AS too. It generally gives better stacking results than registax. Hou cent sharpen in AS though so Registax is still the go-to wavelets sharpening program for me.

If you try stacking in Autostakkert rather than registax it should be able to decorate the frames. I wouldn't bother with pipp or virtual dub really, just try them in Autostakkert

Sorry can't say I can compare them having never owned either, but I'd also say save your money... your C9.25 is more than capable of creating those stunning lunar images too!

Lovely to watch, nice music too. Thanks Wouter!

If I didn't already have the 8.5" version I'd snap it up myself! The mirror alone has got to be worth the asking price

Cheap planetary scope on the bay... nowt to do with me I add. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Vintage-Fullerscopes-6-F8-Mk3-Equatorial-Reflector-Reflecting-Telescope/333350170401?_mwBanner=1&ul_ref=https%3A%2F%2Frover.ebay.com%2Frover%2F0%2Fe11021.m43.l1120%2F7%3Feuid%3D7e7eb85380884f9192fd0e7d6c1cd731%26bu%3D43464197783%26ut%3DRU%26loc%3Dhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.co.uk%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F333350170401%26sojTags%3Dbu%3Dbu%2Cut%3Dut%26srcrot%3De11021.m43.l1120%26rvr_id%3D0%26rvr_ts%3D9c78827716d0a9c550163ee7ffeba420&ul_noapp=true&pageci=d3e2546e-89ce-4d4c-935a-74c466d01f2d

Riveted L brackets, going off this picture

Very nice! The moons look great

Nice work, as mentioned a little overexposed in the highlights but nice looking image nonetheless. Lots of oblique craters visible neat the north pole

Nice work! So much to see in that area of the moon

Very nice! I think some of us would be grateful if you slapped some capture details up there too (scope camera etc...)

Be a lot cheaper and easier if you were to raise your current obs position to improve the view over the garage?!

Wow that is way off, you'd be better off with the tracking switched off! Something definitely not right it should do better than that

You dont really need to keep the planet centred for video capture. As long as it's on the chip then it can wander about and the post processing software will detect it and centre it in each frame pre-alignment

Excellent! I've only seen one of those orange/green fireballs once in my life. To get it on film is outstanding luck

You can buy as little as one single screw from this supplier... https://www.a2stainless.co.uk/M4-x-0-70mm_B22XJ3.aspx (I've linked to the M4 page, not actually sure if you M4 or some other size)