Space Oddity

Wish I could afford the price of one - a bit out of my price bracket.

Having forgotten to regularly charge my powertank it now only lasts around the 3 hour mark and I am only using it to power my Celestron 8SE. I tried searching on the forum for suitable replacement batteries or measurements as I just wanted to replace the battery. I couldn't find this info anywhere so I took the side off (8 screws on the 7ah version—see image—the only hidden screw was in the accessory tray under the lid—although you do need a long-bladed (?) Philips to reach some of the screws). Once off I measured the battery and it is Length 150mm, Height 100mm, Width 65mm. I thought at first that I would be able to fit a larger capacity battery but soon realised that you can't unless you started modifying the case. The largest capacity battery I could find with the right measurements was a Yuasa Yucel Y9-12 which is a 9ah model priced at £15.99 from Hardwareexpress. I hope this will help others with the 7ah powertank who want to change the battery and who can use a screwdriver.

Thanks for a very informative article.

Hi Emeness and MBJ (I went to Supersavers so I don't know what my excuse is ). I tried Manual Align on my Nexus but didn't have much success. I then had an attempt using Skyportal on my smartphone (LG G3 running Android 5.0) but that was terrible the controls were so laggy to use (press the move arrow and nothing would happen for 5 seconds and then it would move). I then managed to borrow an iPad (running OS 10.0.2) and tried the Sky Align method with no success (like before it was way off the target star). I then switched to Manual Align as suggested by MBJ and it worked perfectly . Viewing conditions were not very good but I really enjoyed using Skyportal to show me around the night sky aligning up perfectly every time! I am going to give the Nexus another go to see if I can get it to manual align (if not I had better get saving for an iPad!). So many thank to MBJ for his advice and I hope Emeness has success using this method as well.

Hi M83, Many thanks for the advice, the next time I can see stars i'll give it a go - it's been overcast at night in the east since Saturday and it doesn't look like it is going to clear until Wednesday t

Hi Emeness, sorry to hear that your woes have increased. I have Skyportal on my Nexus tablet and I sometimes have problems with the compass but this was always resolved by recalibrating the tablet. One thought I had was how does the app no what your starting position is? I always make sure that my scope is level but my starting position is arbitrary - maybe it should be facing North or something. If it is not too cloudy tonight I'll try to have another go. Maybe someone who is reading this thread and uses Skyportal could let us know how they set up. I'll let you know how I got on later.

Hi Emeness Did you find out the cause of your misalignment with Skyportal? I recently bought a second-hand Nexstar 8SE and at the same time Skyportal. Like you when I tried to align with it, it came nowhere near the target (Capella).