Cosmic Geoff

The words 'portable' and 'planetary' do not fit well together. For best planetary observing, you need aperture. On a limited budget, this points to a Newtonian on a Dobsonian mount.

You do not need the Barlow. But since you bought it, try it for yourself and you will see what's what.

I'll be amazed if the ASI585MC does not have ROI. Using the ROI will make the selected part of the image look bigger on the laptop screen (usually). It does not affect the resolution but avoids wasting computer power on recording a lot of black sky if you are planet imaging. Note that it will need an IR block filter for proper colour balance, or you can use an IR-pass filter for infrared imaging. FLO should be able to supply the inexpensive ZWO filters for this purpose, but you need to decide how to mount them. The 1.25" filter can screw into the camera 1.25" nosepiece if you are using that. I actually use a manual filter wheel (q.v) so I can switch between filters easily.

You need to tell us what model of camera you have bought. Otherwise we can't comment on how exactly you could use the camera and Barlow together. Your scope has a long focal length which renders a Barlow lens less useful - for visual use the highest useful magnification can be attained without one. Likewise if your camera has small pixels e.g. 2.9um or less, using a Barlow lens with it will confer no advantage.

I do not think you need one. They are used for guided imaging of deep-sky objects (e.g. small galaxies) with long exposures (minutes). Your mount is not well suited to this advanced task. Exposure times for lunar or planetary imaging are very short (milliseconds) so no guiding is needed.

This does not apply to the Nexstar Evolution (which has an alt-azimuth mount). The new owner will have the necessary instructions in the manual. It it sufficient to erect the telescope, roughly level the tripod and perform a star align as instructed.

So you bought a CPC800? Welcome to the club. It's a great scope for general viewing, and for planetary imaging. If you add the f6.3 Celestron focal reducer it also works well for imaging small bright-ish objects like planetary nebulae. I fixed up a trolley for moving the fork/OTA assembly in and out of storage. I replaced the neck-breaking straight-thru finder with a pairing of red-dot and RACI finders. A final tip - if you run the power lead through the handle loop, it will help stop it being tugged around and interrupting the power.

The OP says he no longer has a C8.

I recommend that you buy and read the book "Making Every Photon Count" by Steve Richards (available from FLO). That could save you from spending a lot of money on unsuitable kit. The general outline of what is needed for deep-sky imaging is well established, though different people will have their own opinions about the details.

The question you should be asking is: is the EQ-2 mount suitable for astrophotography? I think the answer is 'no' unless you just intend to try planetary imaging, for which you need a CMOS planetary camera, not a DSLR.

Another thought. What you are describing is a remote-controlled telescope. Instead of owning it yourself, why not subscribe to a remote-viewing service with a big scope located somewhere in the world with clear skies? £4000 would buy you a lot of viewing and imaging time.

You seriously need to see a night-time demonstration of the kind of setup you have in mind, before investing £4000. I understand you want to have a camera on the scope and view the output from indoors. None of this is as easy as you think. The Goto telescope has to be set up and aligned by an operator at the telescope (a fairly skilled operator, judging by some of the posts we get here 🙂). Then the camera has to be focused. How is that going to be done? If you do it, you will require a remote-controlled electric focuser. Then you direct the GoTo to find the object. That's the easy part - just use your tablet or phone etc and the wifi. But will the object be in the camera's field of view? My experience of such matters is that it may not be, and some human intervention at the telescope, or electronic intervention via 'plate-solve and resync' will be necessary to nudge the scope into the correct position. If I was going to rely on this system, I'd want to be darn sure it worked with the gear I had in mind before investing £4000. I'm not saying that what you have in mind is impossible, but what you have in mind is likely to require some skilled development, or require you to be an 'early adopter' of some cutting-edge tech. I have no idea what you mean by this. The Evolution has wifi, but this is purely for connecting the mount to a remote tablet etc, for the sole purpose of controlling the mount.

Have you bought and read "Making Every Photon Count" by Steve Richards - available from FLO - ?

I bought a used Dell Vostro 7th Gen with I5 CPU, 8 GB RAM USB3 and 256 GB SSD. I use it for planetary imaging, EEVA and plate-solving and am quite pleased with its performance. It's quick. Not so impressed with its physical design. The hinge mounts broke and I had to spend hours with a tiny screwdriver and Araldite trying to fix it. If you have the chance to try a slimline laptop before you buy, close the lid and see if the lid will free-fall the last 2cm. if it doesn't and feels stiff, avoid.

Further to selling it, the mount is probably worthless. The OTA on the other hand will work as well as a new-ish one, and a potential purchaser would probably want to de-fork it and place the OTA on a modern mount. As you can see from a post above - £900 for a CPC800 that would be about £2000 new, these SCT outfits do not hold their value well. I suggest you pitch the selling price at half the price of a new OTA.

With most red -dot finders the brightness of the red dot can be turned down. They are best used for aiming at bright objects or at an area of sky. I suggest that you get a right-angle optical finderscope, e.g. 9x50, and mount it to the XT8. I suggest you keep the red-dot finder as the two kinds of finder complement each other and many people find it helpful to have both.

That's normal for an EQ-2. A really rigid tripod mount costs serious money. Or there is the Dobsonian option.

EQ-5 Synscan. Expensive, but substantial, and you can use it for lots of varied tasks. An alt-azimuth GoTo mount is adequate for planetary imaging with a 127mm Mak, while the Mak is of very limited use for deep-sky imaging where you'd want an equatorial mount and a wider field of view..

How is the mount being powered? Is the battery pack maybe not delivering enough power when cold? The wifi circuitry should not be sensitive to moderate cold.

What specification of refractor are you talking about here? I have a 102mm f5 achromatic, and have not been bowled over by its visual performance.

I have had error 16 or 17 a couple of times with a Celestron SLT mount. So far as I recall I fixed this by reprogramming the mount firmware with Celestron's MCupdate utility. You can find instructions online.

If the polar alignment is perfect, you should not need to touch the DEC axis at all when tracking.

Yesterday (19 Jan) I was doing some daytime observing around 11am and commanded the GoTo to find the Moon. It pointed South at the garden fence. I looked up the Moon's position and it was due south with an altitude of just over 6 degrees. Remarkable. With 3% illuninated, I probably would not have been able to see much anyway.

The scope could be used for planetary imaging, with a suitable astro camera. It would only work for deep-space imaging of the most basic kind, with short exposures. Upgrading the eyepieces, particularly the 10mm, and buying a Barlow lens, would be advisable. If the mount has WiFi, the handset may be a costly optional extra.

Platesolving works perfectly with laptop + Sharpcap + USB cable to recent model handset + EQ-5 Synscan mount.