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Oh my! I just checked online prices and the Evostar 80ED is £480 new now! I am sure it was just under £350 when I got it... Well, of course back then I could also buy almost $2 with a pound sterling... 😪

I will agree with some users above, that given your requirements the solution is definitely a little ED doublet. I would say not even a 4", I'd go with an 80mm (e.g. Evostar 80ED), which is very portable and surprisingly capable. For example, I had 2 of my scopes set up side by side one night, the Evostar 80ED and the Celestron 127 Mak, aimed at Jupiter and not a single one of the dozen or so people there thought the Mak was better. A trained observer would be able to get some extra faint details, but the much more colour and contrast of the ED make the visual experience easily superior - the Mak is quite "flat" in comparison, although it is definitely the best planetary performer for imaging. You can get an idea of what I am talking about here. As for the discussion about the ST120 and aperture masks etc, CA is above all a matter of preference, as it is a very "special" kind of artefact, so some users would actually prefer the unobstructed 120mm view, others might not. The 80ED or similar offers better views, it is just a matter of price, which is why I'd try to get one second hand (here, astrobuysell UK, FB etc).

Day time align is a feature of the Pro version. The free version has all functions related to "classic" alignment with the polar scope, including all the reticles (over 20 of them covering pretty much everything ever produced that I have been made aware of). But it's a hobby app, if someone would like the pro version and they do not like to pay for apps, I don't mind being asked for a free promo code.

Sorry, no Android for the foreseeable future. My main phone is an Android, but I've never developed for the platform... No, you definitely don't need to polar align your mounts

Don't worry, PS Align Pro is the version for Amateurs. I added the Daytime align tool Jiggy mentioned when I was going to the 2017 eclipse, but it seems that many of my users use it for night-time alignment when they lack a view of Polaris. So, the version currently under development has a new "Hop Align" tool, that allows you to center any star you can actually see (preferably not too far from the north), before the app "hops" you to the Celestial Pole, having used the reference star as a calibration point. Anyone interested in trying it out early, just pm me with an email to add you to the beta test list. Otherewise it should be in the public version soon enough

Huh, this is a really late reply, but in case someone is looking for something like that, the polar alignment app called Polar Scope Align, (disclaimer: I am the developer) has several tools, one of which is a Deep Space Object database, that allows you to find an object using a "Push To" function (with the option to use an intermediate calibration star to hop from). More details about using it from the point of view of a user here. I am suggesting it as the SkyEye mentioned does a similar thing, using the phone gyro/compass, it does not actually connect to the mount to control it.

I assume all manufacturers make them separately, I can't imagine an assembly line for all the mount parts and polar scopes together. They just make the polar scopes so they can just slide in and lock at a fixed position and during polar scope assembly they have a similar procedure to get the reticle both upright and centered. I would not be wondering if only expensive mount manufacturers bothered to center their polar scopes, but iOptron for example has been doing it since their first mounts over 10 years ago and they are price-competitive with SkyWatcher. Then again it could be worse, Celestron (same parent manufacturer) is still shipping a horrible polar scope reticle (the one with a generic "Polaris" circle drawn for some random epoch). No wonder sharpcap etc are popular despite having you carry a laptop around for something as simple as a polar alignment.

For SkyWatcher current polar scope owners that use Polar Scope Align Pro (PS Align Pro), since version 5.5 there is another option of using the polar scope reticle in the random angle it was installed in. Taken from the app, the idea is that you first figure out at what angle it is installed in - the app will want to know what hour/minute mark points up at "home" position. There are a few ways to do this (on a level mount), borrowed from the app: So in the above example we know our reticle is installed so that 1h 30m is at top. We open the Rotated Reticle View in the app and enter it. We only need to do this once, the app will remember and the rotated reticle tool will now on show you how to polar align with your RA at home position: So you see on the lower left the hour angle is listed in reference to the rotated view of your reticle (and as usual you can zoom in on the actual reticle view if you prefer to use the visual aid). Other manufacturers seem to manage to install similar reticles upright just fine, not sure why SkyWatcher doesn't even try...

Chuck Yeager, (played by Sam Shepard) passed away last week. If you don't know what I am talking about definitely watch (or read) The Right Stuff

Interestingly, because I track manufacturer specs for updating my mount comparison charts here, I know that Skywatcher used to specify 25kg visual for the mount (18kg imaging though), and users generally felt it could handle even more, but when they introduced the much more expensive AZ-EQ6 they removed any mention of the 25kg left the 18.2kg as "generic" capacity and specified just a bit more (20kg) for AZ-EQ6 to make it sound better. Not sure if the AZ-EQ6 can lift as much, I've seen the NEQ6 Pro with some impressive loads. They did the same with the HEQ5 downgrading to 13.7kg from 15kg when they introduced the AZ-EQ5.

I suspect some of you with iPhones/iPads & equatorial mounts will be aware of the app Polar Scope Align. It has supported the Skywatcher 2012-2032 polar scope since it came out a few years ago and as it was quickly made clear it was never installed "upright" (unlike the iOptron, Tak, AstroPhysics etc polar scopes), users had to rotate the RA to make it upright (or at least have one of the 4 cardinal points pointing the top). So I had added a function (called "set zero position") where you give the app the RA on your hand controller the moment you had the reticle upright, and the next time the app would tell you what RA to rotate to with your hand controller to repeat that orientation. It makes some assumptions, that your date/time/location is set correctly on the controller, and you have done a rough star alignment before, so I called it an "advanced" feature, and a user recently asked me whether I could instead let users polar align with their mount at the "home" position, i.e. with the counterweight shaft pointing to the ground and the polar scope at the random angle it was installed in. Well, v5.5 has just come out with that function, you can see below the regular polar alignment screen as well as the rotated screen: There's a couple of methods for calculating the rotation in the app help when pressing that (i) button, so setting it up once in the app should be enough as long as your mount is reasonably level from then on. Unlike the "set zero position" function, I could not add the rotated view to the free version, as it relied on one of the pro version tool - apologies for that. Anyway, I add so many things to the app every time (not to blow my own horn, but the changes list is rather extensive) and users often don't realise they are there, so I thought this tidbit might be helpful to many Skywatcher users.

I wrote a complaint to my local council and explained what I do and that the street light at the corner of the backyard is such a problem and they replaced it with one that limits the light angle to not disturb me as much. It depends on the council, so YMMV.

And 3.2 is out. You now get a light pollution button that gives you a Bortle estimate and a proper World Atlas 2015 artificial brightness based color coding. Pressing the button opens up the details: Access to some new forecast sources under "Other" sources is added as well. Both the free and the plus versions got the updates, so no reason to not try it out And PM me with your email if you want to try new features before they are released!

That's interesting, shameless plug, but when I was designing Xasteria as an iOS client for 7Timer, apart from the default icon view I offered a "text" view, for which I considered whether showing an arc seconds figure would be better than a percentage. In the end, I made it a percentage, to match transparency, but I made them both have 100% = best. I mean, in my mind, "maximum" seeing/transparency at 100% should be the best conditions, no? E.g.: I am still considering whether arcsecs might be better for users that know what it is, but overall I suggest amateur astronomers try out the 7Timer icon view, it is IMHO by far the fastest astro-forecast to read, simply "less/smaller/darker icons = darker/best sky for stargazing". Or to borrow from the Xasteria help: This applies to the 7Timer website as well of course if you don't have an iOS device to get the free app. If you do have the app though, it will also give you quick access to alternative sources with direct links to Meteoblue, Clear Outside and more for your location. In general, 7Timer is about the best you can do for worldwide astro-seeing forecast. The original poster asked about accuracy, and there is a scientific paper listed on the 7Timer website dealing with measured accuracy, if you can't be bothered to read it, overall I'd say it is probably more accurate than cloud forecasts. Talking about cloud forecast, although I always recommend to keep an eye on 7Timer for seeing, for short-term cloud-coverage (like next 3-6h) you'd want to complement it with something that is updated faster (7Timer is every 6h, which is not bad compared to the 12h of the popular N. America astro-seeing forecast Clear Sky Charts), like Dark Sky (via Clear Sky Charts or Xasteria Plus) or Meteoblue.

The short answer IMHO is "yes, but not much". The long answer is that filtering is not very easy for stellar/full spectrum objects like galaxies. You need a "generic" light pollution filter that tries to block specifically monochromatic (sodium etc) lights to increase the contrast - it cuts stellar light as well, but proportionally more light pollution. There are some cheap ones that don't help much, some more expensive ones that help more. However, given that cities are switching to LED lights, these filters become less effective. Filters are much more effective with emission nebulae where you have specific emission lines for your target and can just cut out everything else.

M33 is the classic object to puzzle beginners. Even more so beginner astrophotographers. So you observe/photograph Andromeda as your first galaxy. Great, what's next? You open the messier list, filter for galaxies, sort by brightness (screenshots from PS Align's DSO database): OK! M33 is next! You try to see or photograph it, to rather dismal results. What happened? Sorting instead the M galaxies by surface brightness would have given you an idea - to find M33 you would have to scroll to the absolute bottom: Yup, it is 3rd from last! The magnitude is the total brightness over quite a big area, and, as M33 is quite big, the magnitude is not very representative. The surface brightness may also be a bit misleading for big targets, as it is just the average, when they might still have a relatively bright core - so M33 is easier to see than some other galaxies with higher average surface brightnesses. But in astrophotography the surface brightness is quite telling: M33 is indeed one of the harder Messier galaxies to get good detail on.

Xasteria Plus 3.1 is in beta testing an I don't have many people trying it out, if anyone with an iPhone/iPad/iPod is interested, PM me your email address to add you. Currently in test we have Green/White night mode options, Satellite passes and various other tweaks and fixes.

By the way, if anyone is interested in joining the Xasteria / Xasteria Plus beta test list to try out new features before they are released publicly, just send me a PM with your email address. Thanks!

Users of the Xasteria Astro Weather app will have received an upgrade to 3.0 yesterday, which adds several new features, including Clear Sky Charts (for North America) and access to light pollution maps: Enjoy! In order for the app to always remain free, but be able to upgrade the main service it uses (7Timer) with more servers, you might have noticed there was the paid version Xasteria Plus released (previously only included as part of Polar Scope Align Pro), which has some extra things like night mode, lunar calendar, location manager, but most importantly not being free allows me to use paid weather services as well. So I have added Dark Sky for now, which updates hourly combining real time radar to get a (hopefully) more precise short-term forecast. As always both forecasts (7Timer and Dark Sky) can switch between 3 visualisations (icons/stripes/text), and additionally to night mode:

As you have surmised, and to definitively answer the original question, Polar Scope Align Pro does work for the Southern Hemisphere (including the Daytime/No polar scope alignment tool that you were actually asking about), but, unfortunately, I don't make an Android version. And that's even though my main phone is an Android - I just have never developed for Android and by now, after adding stuff to it for years, the App is enormously complex to port, which is probably a couple of times I tried to find someone to help it did not pan out...

Thanks. As I note on the page, I decided to stop at $15k - the Paramount ME II is just at that limit, but also at 100kg payload capacity (the ME II is 109kg). I just had to stop somewhere (to avoid comparing the completely incomparable) and it so happened the ME II fell right outside. I mean now that you mentioned it, maybe I will include it if I update again, since it is quite popular in its category...

I haven't seen a report of someone using it with that kind of load, but I remember reports of the previous version being used near max load (although it did require good balance), so I assume the MKII specs are not exaggerated either. It is a very minimalist design in general, which helps a lot with weight.

Some mounts are more tolerant than others to length too. Payload definitely does not tell the whole story, even if we had an unbiased 3rd party decide on maximum payloads, never mind each manufacturer having their own ideas... But I like charts and the payload/weight, price/payload seemed like the most interesting without being too controversial... PS. I feel a bit bad I had to list the EQ6-R with the "photo" payload, as there is no official "visual" figure and I thought I shouldn't just make one up. But since it takes more photo weight than the NEQ6 it will take more visually, so it should be considered the new payload/£ champ.

Don't know if you have seen these before, but I recently updated the comparison tables and graphs that I keep. I had first done them for myself, because a UK shop that had nice aggregate tables (forgot its name now) shut down. There are separate sets for the low-end mass market mounts, and the mid-high end mounts. I did try to assemble things like PE values from various CN threads etc, but they are too anecdotal to chart. However I did chart price & head weight per payload (even though payload numbers are obviously not directly comparable), which gives an interesting at-a-glance view of the current market. For example here are the payload/mount head charts (the rest in the linked blog posts):posts):

No, I was talking about the in-app help of the app Polar Scope Align specifically. I get questions from people confused even after reading it, and the rotation of the Skywatcher reticle is one of the most common questions, so I have tried to clarify the instructions a few times, but I am still not making it clear it seems It's not that easy to describe it, and Skywatcher could fix that aspect so easily, other manufacturers manage it fine. You are right about the SW manual though, my app users read my instructions AND the SW manual and that probably does more harm than good.