Cosmic Geoff

I have to say that I have not had connection issues with the power to my EQ5 Synscan.

On the other hand, I have had trouble with the power inlet to each of my three Celestron Nexstar mounts, with jiggling of the plug breaking the connection and causing a reset.  In these cases, routing the cable through a cable tie etc alleviated the problem.

Are these zoom (variable magnification) binoculars?  Zoom binoculars should be avoided.  Single zoom eyepieces, often used in astro scopes, have their drawbacks, and in binoculars there is the added problem of keeping the zoom eyepieces to track exactly in magnification and alignment.   There may be zoom binoculars that work properly and reliably but they will be expensive premium brands.

Also 24mm seems rather small.  I see that your signature contains several pairs of decent binoculars so I wonder why you are excited about the Monk Premier. 🙂

2 hours ago, Atomic said:

Capture Area=2750x2200

There's your answer.  It will take time to stuff this much data down a USB2 connection.  That is four times as much data as a ASI224MC even if you are using the whole of the ASI224MC's chip and not a reduced region-of-interest.

However, for deep sky imaging, you will be doing something entirely different: stacking a series of multi-second exposures.

5 minutes ago, HubertasAstro said:

Ill look in too planetary cameras

Excellent plan.

Here is my shot of the supernova, taken on 22 May at around 22:00 UT.  !02mm f5 achro, ASI224MC, stacked 10x 20sec exposure.

Sky conditions were rubbish - I could barely see  Castor & Pollux with the naked eye. The supernova is the brightest object at lower centre.

I also have a poor quality pre-discovery picture of M101 taken last year where the supernova is predictably absent.

There is lots of information online about collimation. You just have to do a search for it.

Pollux should look like a dot, not a circle, notched or otherwise.

M5 will look like a faint fuzzy blob in a 72mm scope.   An image with a 90 second exposure will look much brighter and more impressive.  That's why imaging is so popular.

M5 looks more impressive in an 8" telescope, a size commonly used by visual observers these days.

14 hours ago, Gibbous Mars said:

I was thinking something along these lines should do the trick but any advise would be appreciated!

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0BLHGZ4QP/?coliid=I2DZJTHMYLTU2A&colid=174HHE3IM73KU&psc=1&ref_=list_c_wl_lv_ov_lig_dp_it

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08NCLCWFB/?coliid=I1EG3L6Q5AYQEX&colid=174HHE3IM73KU&psc=1&ref_=list_c_wl_lv_ov_lig_dp_it

Why pay £25 for the Amazon supply, capable of delivering 24v and zapping your kit,  when  you can buy a switched-mode supply rated for astro use at 5 amps at +12v, and rated for outdoor use including low temperatures?

Lynx Astro 12v DC 5A Low Noise Power Supply | First Light Optics 

Cheaper than a battery power tank.

Dew shields are a non-optional accessory for SCTS, just like refractors always have a dew shield.  The reason manufacturers don't provide them for SCTs is presumably because it makes their product look ugly and adds a small cost.  

Depending on the depth of your pocket and the severity of local conditions, you can use a home-made cardboard or foam plastic shield, a purchased dew shield, or (in the case of Celestron) a smart-looking black metal shield and a heated ring that replaces the corrector plate retention ring.

The dew shield works by preventing the relevant parts of the telescope radiating heat to the (very cold) night sky and becoming cold enough to condense moisture.

Did you get a manual with it? If not, download the Skywatcher manual for the HEQ5 as a .pdf and print it out.  And study it.  Quite of the information you may find online is misleading.

You need to mechanically polar align the mount - roughly for visual use and more accurately for astrophotography.  The "home position" has the telescope OTA above the mount and pointed at the north celestial pole (close to Polaris).  The GoTo mount will use the home position as a reference when starting a star alignment, or when resuming from Park.

It would be helpful if you explained what you intended to do with that camera and 5 SE and ASIAR, and whether you expect your 11 year old daughter to be able to operate it.

From the information you have provided, I would say that this combination of kit is not going to do anything useful.  The 5 SE is not suitable for deep-space astrophotography.  If you want to do planetary astrophotography, a colour camera would be a better choice, and an ASIAR will not be needed.

Earlier this year I used a 50mm aperture f4 finder/guider to image that bright comet that received a lot of attention.  (C/2022 E3 ZTF). I used it with an ASI224MC.

Mainly I wanted to ensure I got the whole comet in the field.  Yes, it did work, but I got better images with a 102mm f5 refractor.

OTOH, if I want to take a widefield shot again I will know what to do.

6 hours ago, Lunuar Mike said:

But I have these guilty feelings the scope finds the stuff for me.

Having guilty feelings about using GoTo is faintly absurd.  There is no "rule" that says amateur astronomers have to find objects the old -fashioned Victorian way. But hold on a minute - Victorian observers often had the advantage of having brass setting circles of a useful size , which modern mounts don't have,  and dark skies in urban areas, which we don't have either. And without electronics the whole pursuit of modern digital astrophotography would be impossible.

So if you enjoy using GoTo, use it and don't feel guilty. 

You need to make some attempt to match the effective focal ratio to the pixel size of the camera.  This means that with larger pixel sizes and fast telescopes you need a Barlow.  The newer dedicated planetary cameras often have 2.9um pixels which will match with a f10 SCT without requiring a Barlow lens.

In practice a dedicated planetary camera is likely to be  easier to use and offer a higher video frame rate than a DSLR.  

1 hour ago, Franklin said:

I'm going to get a better laptop which I will use just for EAA with this camera and my budget is no more than £300. I pretty much know zero about computers so would welcome any recommendations from all you experienced old hands, thanks.

If budget is limited, note that pallet-loads of refurbished business laptops are available on Ebay for far less than the cost of a new one, so you should be able to find something suitable.  I bought a Dell Vostro, about 6 years old, with  Win10, 7th gen. i5 processor, 8GB memory and  256GB SSD for a trivial sum and use it for EAA and planetary imaging. It plate-solves quickly too.

I suggest you don't buy anything below this spec, and in particular avoid older machines with hard drive, as these are power hogs.

I note in passing that you can buy a new Win 10 laptop for £100 or less (!) but the performance is what you'd expect considering that a new  laptop can cost up to £4000. So avoid the cheapies.

To bring this back to topic:  It looked like the bolt I found that fitted the plate in the base of my SLT was either 1/4" BSW or 1/4" UNC. 

I had a thought last night and tried screwing a couple of camera tripods into the base of the SLT mount. Both fitted perfectly. 

Looking up the camera tripod thread, I find it is 1/4 20 UNC   So that answers the original poster's question.

Just to kill off the 11mm suggestion: 11mm is a lot bigger than 1/4".  My SLT also has a rectangular label stuck to the underside, but it has something completely different printed on it.

I have a screw that fits that threaded hole. I made an adaptor from SLT head to EQ-5 mount, and the screw in question is a coarse thread, which I think is a British 1/4" BSW thread.  But I just found a screw in the junkbox that fitted, so I could be wrong.

I found that my Celestron CPC800 would occasionally malfunction when directed via GoTo to near the zenith (80 to 90 deg altitude).  Instead of slewing to target, it would just keep moving slowly past the 90 deg altitude.  I could regain control by stopping it with the handset and redirecting it somewhere else.  I never did find out what the problem was.

7 hours ago, Adam_Wade said:

I currently have a AVX with Error Code 16/17 issues. Due to 2-way shipping and repair costs from Celestron, I am not sure what to do with it given that I bought it for $650 in 2013.

That same error is a straightforward DIY fix on a Celestron SLT mount - just reload the mount (not handset) firmware. It actually means 'no response from mount'.  If that doesn't work, check connectors.

We could help you more if you gave more detail.

If  you are measuring the internal diameter of your bowl as 9.8cm. a SLT mount will not fit.

4 minutes ago, AstroMuni said:

Thats sad. Any idea what is the ST port used for on the old model?

It could be for guiding, or for connecting the RA +DEC hand controller which does not appear in your photos.

The SLT mount head sits in a bowl with an internal diameter of 125mm at the top.

Why do you want to fit the SLT mount to the 80GTL tripod?

No idea. Which items do you have? I can measure up the SLT bowl so you can compare it with the 80GTL bowl.

What are you trying to achieve? If the 80GTL mount is built for a lighter scope than the SLT mount,  mounting a scope like a 127mm Mak (the heaviest recommended for the SLT mount and tripod) will not go well.

The current AVX and CGX both have 2" steel legs.

The legs on a SE 6/8 are much thinner.

First of all, note that the Prinz 330 is potentially a good-quality telescope, and made in Japan.

As for the mount, I should think there is little chance of securing replacement parts.  It is not clear what the effect of the breakage is. If the mount can be operated by turning the black knob, you could just leave it as-is.

Otherwise, your best move would be to find a mechanical engineer who can effect a repair.

In theory, you could have the telescope put on a better modern mount, but I anticipate this would cost far more than you paid for the whole outfit.