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Hi Comet71217, I have the SLT 102 that I use once in a while. It is really a wide field scope - very good for things like the brighter messier objects - Pleiades, Beehive, Butterfly clusters and so on. I have found low power views with something like a 32mm eyepiece of areas of the Milky Way or the Orion Belt area quite spectacular under magnitude 5 skies. Under these low magnifications the mount seems to be stable enough. I have tried higher power views of the Moon and Jupiter (like with a 9mm eyepiece and 2X barlow giving 146X) but chromatic and spherical aberrations start to become obtrusive and focusing is more difficult with the unsteady mount. Filters might help a lot - for example a the dark green filter in the Celestron Eyepiece and Filter kit seemed to make the view of Jupiter much sharper with banding and the GRS easily visible. Regarding durability I have had it for several years and it has not failed at all. Alignment (I usually do the two star) works like a charm. If high magnification planetary viewing is not high on your requirements I think you can be quite happy with this scope. All the best

While The Register do try to put some humor in the titles and content of their stories, they do seem to be credible. In the case of 2006 QV89 I did a quick search and the Wikipedia article on it corroborates what is reported by The Register. More seriously, it looks like there is room for improvement in our ability to reliably track Near Earth Objects that might be a threat. For this object the VLT had to be used to rule out the chance of impact and I am sure getting observing time on telescopes of this class is very competitive. The LSST which is supposed to be starting operation in 2020 has tracking of Near Earth Objects as on of its scientific goals so should improve our abilities in this regard. But maybe we should be more worried by being struck by an Unmanned Autonomous Vehicle.https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/07/19/selfdriving_bus_injuries

That is true and while I think we shouldn't be completely ignorant of what has happened in the past, some compromise will be needed if humanity is to move forward. I am certain that all of those protesting the TMT are benefiting from the use of products made possible by science and technnology - from the clothes they wear to the food they eat to the mobile phones they are using to organize the protests. None of these would have been possible if we had wanted to preserve the entire Earth in the pristine state it was in 100,000 years ago. We just have to find ways of minimizing the negative impact to the environment or cultural and religious values. Best

Hi All, While the article mentions that the native Hawaiians believe construction of the TMT will "desecrate" the site, throughout history large structures have been built in tribute to cultural and religious beliefs. Somehow huge and ongoing efforts have to be made to convince the protesters that the value of the work done at the observatories for all of humanity, along with the uniqueness of the site's suitability for this type of scientific work, definitively makes this construction of the latter category. Hoping this issue is resolved to the satisfaction of all parties...

Link to amusing story https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/07/17/wasteroid_qv89_earth/ Cheers

Science at its best. Congratulations to the guys who did this!

Hi TheNoob... I also had a very similar scope (Firstscope 114 EQ) but then it had a better mount EQ2 and came with 10mm and 20mm eyepieces. The 20mm eyepiece that came with yours has a built in prism to provide an erect image. I also have experience with your particular model. Its a tough scope for a beginner but if you really persist you can see a lot. I purchased the Celestron eyepiece and filter kit that has eyepieces from 32mm to 4mm and a 2X barlow (The filters and barlow are not really useful). With these I manged to see the Great Red Spot of Jupiter, Saturn's rings (including the Cassini Division), polar ice caps on mars at opposition and more. The brighter Messier objects (The Messier Catalog is a listing of some deep sky object including clusters and Nebulas) can look very good with the lower power eyepieces. The problems are that at the higher powers the shaky mount will make focusing really hard and you may have to learn to collimate the mirror to get the sharpest views (Collimation is described in the manual which as mentioned above you can download). The finder is also quite bad (the red dot finder that came with the old model is much more usable). Because the mount is manual you will also learn your way around the sky well with this scope. I think if you want to make the most out of this scope you should purchase the eyepiece and filter accessory kit and a red dot finder. Then with a lot of patience and dedication you can squeeze the most out of the scope and decide how much you want to pursue astronomy as a hobby, as well as be well informed on the equipment you might want in future. All the best!

You have impressive gear for a "newbie", what was your camera?

I noticed a line to the right of the trapezium just I was posting this, could it be a meteorite or satellite? It also appears in the previous three pictures at successively higher locations on the image. I don't remember the time between pictures but I would guess may 10 to 20 seconds - so maybe slow for a meteorite.

Here is mine - M42 with Celestron CPC 1100, Celestron f6.3 focal reducer, Sony Alpha 58 SLT. Exposure was 20 seconds ISO 1600. Automatic noise reduction was on and file format was raw. The CPC mount was the normal Alt/Az without a wedge. No processing except reducing the image size and saving as jpeg with Shotwell. Image was taken on January 3rd with sky darkness maybe 4.5 magnitude. I took a total of 8 picture at 5, 10, 15 and 20 seconds each at ISO 800 and 1600. This is the best of the lot in my judgment except some of them had rounder stars - I did not use a remote shutter release so I believe this is due to camera shake. I could see some of the brighter stars on the LCD screen of the camera otherwise it was just full of noise with no sign of the nebula. After pressing the shutter release the camera exposed and processed for some seconds, then the nebula popped into view. This was a little surprising to me - next they will have an astrophotography mode just like the portrait and landscape etc. modes and then maybe include Photoshop on the camera!

Hi All, I have finally decided to try my hand at astrophotography. I have a CPC 1100 so I need either an equatorial wedge or a field rotator for long exposure photography. I am tending toward the field rotator because a)it will be difficult and probably expensive to ship in the bulky wedge to where I live and the thought of the CPC cantilevered almost horizontally because of my 9 degree latitude location kind of frightens me. My question is does anyone have experience with this or any other field rotator for long exposure photography. Best