Cosmic Geoff

I'd say the mount/tripod is inadequate.  It might do for visual use but for deep sky imaging it is clearly inadequate.  Some imagers use a smaller Newt than that, e.g. a 130PDS, on a much heavier mount (Heq5 or EQ6).

By the way, one night I forgot to position the counterweight on my EEVA imaging rig and the EQ5 Synscan was apparently not affected at all. 

The most practical solution would be to order a replacement 4/5 SE motherboard, which hopefully you can obtain from Celestron or their distributors.

OTOH, if the "chips" are generic resistors, capacitors or diodes, you might be able to source suitable replacements on ebay. This assumes you have the capability of identifying and desoldering/soldering them yourself.  If not, you would be better advised to buy the motherboard.

What is your budget? Is weight or bulk a constraint?

You could add a Newtonian to that list.  

Why have you ruled out a Schmidt-Cassegrain?

For planetary observing, the bigger the aperture, the better (seeing permitting).

1 hour ago, squipper said:

The scope comes on a celestron  advanced gt mount with a payload of 30 pounds and the scope is 8pounds in weight 

12 hours ago, squipper said:

Understand that   i still have "L" plates and stabilisers on  in this situation 

Rather than rushing to buy anything you should take a step back and do two things: 

1) Buy the books "Making Every Photon Count" by Steve Richards (a book on deep-sky imaging available from FLO) and "Guide to High Resolution Lunar & Planet Imaging" by Dave Eagle FRAS (see his website www.star-gazing.co.uk for distribution.)  Depending on how much you understand of the contents, certain conclusions can be drawn...  The investment of £20 +£10 here might save you much more money further down the line.

2) I understand that you already have a camera, and a small telescope.  As others have suggested, put the camera on some sort of mount and try imaging the night sky with it.  Then attach the camera to the telescope and try imaging something with the combination.  Download some free software with which to process the results.  After this experience you should have a better idea of what practical astrophotography is like. You will then have a much better idea what to buy in order to progress with the hobby than if you buy expensive kit blindly.

The Advanced GT isn't a bad mount. It's obsolete, but similar to the current model AVX.  "Scope" I assume refers to the C6, which is a handy scope to have but not a first choice if you want to image anything.  The focal length is much too long for widefield and it's on the small side for planetary imaging.

Note that you can generally download the user manual for any mount or mount/telescope retail bundle from the Internet.  If you are not familiar with GoTo mounts, it would not hurt to download a manual and read it.   The instruction manual for my EQ-5 Synscan mount runs to about 50 pages.

5 minutes ago, squipper said:

Would be easier to take a short video of a planet instead of  a load of single frames to keep down the shutter count 

You probably need to read up on the techniques for planetary imaging. 🙂 The normal method is to take a short video, but  a DSLR may not be well suited for this - serious planetary imagers use a large telescope with long focal length and a planetary camera that can take high-speed video and crop the region of interest.

12 hours ago, squipper said:

. I want to image the horses head, and heart nebula .

If you want to image these in particular you should pay close attention to what telescope, camera, filters, mount etc and in what sky conditions the imagers you want to emulate operated.  I have tried imaging both these objects from my Bortle 6 location with the gear mentioned above and the results were very poor.

To give you a pointer, for EAA I use a 102mm f5 achromat telescope, an ASI224MC camera and a EQ5 Synscan mount.  (Partly because I had all this gear anyway)  It works really well for quick images of anything that will fit in a 0.5 deg field, e.g smaller galaxies and various planetary nebulae.  It is not much good for imaging planets (too small & focal length too short)  or for really wide field images (all of M31), or for taking long exposure award winning images.   If you all up the prices you will see this is over £1000 worth of kit, excluding the laptop.  You do not need a large aperture for imaging - a bit of exposure time brightens things up marvellously - unless you want to image very small things at a high resolution.

If you want to image anything you need a decent mount - you can always change the scope or the camera.

You mention dso imaging with a large Newtonian in your initial post - that is not beginner stuff,  and generally requires autoguiding. And check the prices of large chip cameras.

48 minutes ago, Simon128D said:

Am I correct in saying that I would be removing my IR-Cut filter and using the IR-Pass instead? I know this seems like a dumb a very obvious thing but I have seen conflicting posts in several places saying they use their IR pass along with their IR cut but that seems illogical to me!? 

You shouldn't believe everything you read online.  🙂 Cutting the IR with  visual pass filter and then adding a IR pass (and visual cut) filter is going to mean you don't pass much of anything.

The only reason I can think of for using two filters together is to suppress an unwanted pass-band.

6 minutes ago, Simon128D said:

I do currently have an IR-Cut filter on the nose piece of the camera but surely I would remove that in place of the IR Pass when wanting to image in IR? 

Definitely, yes.

I found that with an ASI224MC camera, using an IR-pass filter gave sharper images on Saturn, but with an ASI462MC  it fails to do so. 

I doubt that it matters much which IR pass filter you use unless you have some advanced project in mind, rather than wanting to see what difference it makes.  I use the IR pass filter from ZWO (850nm) that costs about £25. The longer wavelength pass filters may give greater suppression of atmospheric disturbance.

Using an IR-pass filter should render the ADC  much less necessary (or unnecessary), but if you are using a UV-IR cut filter and an IR pass filter in turn, leaving the ADC in place saves you the bother of removing kit and refocusing.  In my case I just rotate the filter wheel.

11 hours ago, lawsio said:

Interesting the '(and an elevated stand)' part. Is that an option with this scope? I would have assumed it was far to big and heavy for a tripod to take it? Not sure the wife will let me get away with having it in a dome!

I meant make your own elevated stand e.g with concrete blocks and put the Dob mount on top of it.  Like a table-top Dob but on a larger scale.

The 8" Newtonian is not 'far too big and heavy for a tripod'.  You just have to buy a suitable mount and tripod (not cheap, alas), de-mount the Dob, fit it with tube rings and put it on the mount.  In practice it would be less bother to sell the Dob on and buy another Newt with the suitable mount as a package.  It's up to you to decide whether you want to do this and set up a heavy mount and tripod + tube assembly every time you use it, and pay out for a suitable mount (the most likely off the shelf solution would be a HEQ5 GoTo at around £1000)

Or did you mean the 8" OTA is too big and heavy for you to lift to shoulder height?

At the 8" size another option is to buy an 8" SCT with tripod mount (normally GoTo).  In terms of weight, size etc this would be much more user-friendly than a Newtonian or Dob.  Not cheap though.

A Maksutov would make a good planetary scope, if you are looking for something fairly small and manageable.  You should be able to pick one with a mount that is within your budget.  A  150mm PL Newtonian and mount might be within your budget,  offering more aperture for the money but more bulky.

None of these are likely to give you planetary views as good as you'd get with your 200mm Dob (and an elevated stand).

12 hours ago, Knmurphy1 said:

Is it possible to plate solve with such a long focal length?

It might prove challenging, given the small field of view.  But why would you want to platesolve, other than for imaging (small) deep space objects? 

I found that when imaging planetary nebulae etc with an 8" SCT and f6.3 focal reducer,  the 'Precise GoTo' available on Celestron mounts was usually enough to get the object into the camera FOV.

Early morning session with CPC800, ASI462MC, filter wheel, ADC,  visual pass, UV and methane filters.   Jupiter & Saturn: 5000 frame video, processed with Autostakkert & Registax,

Moon 500 frame video (infrared), methane single shot of 556ms.

The Saturn image is similar to that from 20 July, while the Jupiter image is my best for this season.  The Jupiter image taken with the CH4 (methane) filter is interesting. It shows the GRS, a bright belt and two moons.

12 hours ago, M40 said:

would the 114 scope do for the planets

Only if your expectations are low.

  A good scope for planetary viewing (or imaging) bears little resemblance to a good scope for beginner DSO imaging.

You could try DSO imaging with the 114/500 if you put it on a serious mount.

If you are limiting yourself to one scope, then you should decide what sort of thing you want to image (ultrawide, e.g. the Orion ring), wide field (M31 and companions), narrowfield (small distant galaxies or planetary nebulae), or planetary, and buy accordingly.  Trying to make one scope or camera do everything is unlikely to end well.  There are tools that can show you what field you get with a particular scope and camera.

The C925 will not be balanced once you move it away from the horizontal, unless there is a balance weight not visible in the photos.  Also note that the Celestron OTA is designed to be mounted via a dovetail bar on the side.  My 8" Celestron SCT is mounted that way.

What objects do you want to see? Faint extended objects will be invisible or very hard to see in Bortle 7, while planets and double stars will be observable.  EAA would help to some extent.

I'd need convincing that it is worth trying to upgrade the mount, given that it is already GoTo and has plain bearings.  If its existing performance does not match your ambitions and the APO scope, I'd say you need to invest in a better mount.   I use an EQ-5 Synscan for EEVA imaging with a 102mm achro.  The mount has a bigger weight capacity than the EQ-3-2 and has roller bearings.  Ambitious imagers recommend an EQ-6.

SCTs with their typical f10 focal ratio, are not demanding of eyepieces, so no desperate need to buy exotic eyepieces. I use Plossls for the lower powers.

An 8mm eyepiece is the highest power you are likely to need.  I have a 5mm Celestron X-cel LX I acquired as part of a bundle, but have only used it once or twice in my SCT. 

Have you looked on FLO or other sites, to see what kind of mount is bundled with Celestron's C925 when sold with a mount? You will see that they are all GoTo mounts. Celestron don't offer a non-GoTo or manual alternative.  See also the CPC925 which is integrated with a fork mount.

I have the same tripod that's used for the CPC925. It's quite a heavy item and very rigid.

I fitted a second dovetail bar on the OTA of my C8 SCT to mount accessories and to give something to hold on to while mounting the scope.

14 hours ago, Jim Smith said:

f I wanted to make out the spiral arms in a galaxy or two from my Bortle 4 garden on a night of good seeing, what aperture 'scope would I need?

 

A case where a camera will reveal far more than the eye. From my Bortle 6 location I have secured many images with a 4" refractor that show spiral arms in galaxies.

It's an adequate planetary camera. But there are later models with smaller pixels that match better with typical planetary scopes, e.g. no Barlow needed with a SCT or Mak.  With a ASI224MC and a f5 scope you'd want to use a Barlow lens of around x3. 

Check out AWR: AWR Technology (Astronomy - Electronics, Motors, GOTO drives, Sidereal Clocks, Display Units)

who may be able to do something for you.

Revelations of driver trouble here:

New ASI120MM Mini Drivers Not Working - Beginning Deep Sky Imaging - Cloudy Nights

Premium batteries should work, but I have found that the cheap "8 for £1" batteries are useless. Try a proper power supply if you can.

I have not encountered a case where refreshing the firmware restored an apparently dead handset to life.  I assume you are plugging the handset into the socket marked "Hand Control".  But if you want to try it (which entails buying cable, adaptor and downloading various bits of software) you might at least get an idea of how dead the unit is. 

Does anything happen if you press the R/L/up/down buttons in the middle of the handset?

You could also dismantle the mount base to see if anything is unplugged in there.