Cosmic Geoff

23 hours ago, skippyinspace said:

warning can not communicate with DEC Motor controller.

A similar message from a Celestron mount often means that the mount firmware needs to be refreshed/reprogrammed.   But maybe it's time to bin the Gem5 and buy a mount that works.

There are a number of issues here that we need to tease out.   Firstly, telescope mounts are a relatively low-volume business, produced in thousands at best. Compare that with cars, produced in millions, or smartphones - tens of millions. 

Re modular parts for new mounts: I don't see the benefit for the manufacturer.  For the more expensive mounts, the demand from users is mostly for GoTo mounts, to the point where there is little point (commercially) in providing anything other than the GoTo version, engineered for production.

As for modular parts for old mounts, we already have this situation with the EQ-5, which I assume was originally a manual mount. One can buy it as a manual, as a motorised, and as a GoTo, and buy kits from Sky-watcher and (apparently) from various third-party suppliers to upgrade it to GoTo.  But are all the old & new EQ-5 and their clones all mechanically the same? There's the problem. If they are not, there is no guarantee that the kits will fit.

It is unfortunate when the electronics on an old mount fails, but there is little incentive for the manufacturers to keep supporting the same mechanical design for decades so that spare electronics for new mounts will fit it.  

It would be good if, as iantaylor suggests, the mounts had a standard interface between mount, motors and electronics, but engineering this would probably increase costs. As some of you may have noticed, Skywatcher and others have yet to fit a proper USB port to their mounts rather than a lashup involving a serial chip, which suggests a lack of resources for serious development. 

I have looked inside one or two GoTo mounts and been surprised at how little stuff is in there in some of them - a circuit board and a couple of cheap-looking motor/gearboxes.  And is a Synscan upgrade worth the £350 or so they charge for it?  They can charge that because there is no off-the shelf ready to fit alternative and they are made and sold in low volumes.

I suspect there already are people who can take old and failing drive systems and upgrade them, but this bespoke service is unlikely to be cheap.

Any GEM GoTo mount of adequate capacity would do the job, e.g. HEQ5 or AVX.  An EQ5 GoTo will not be of adequate capacity IMHO.

As for budget, I'm still laughing. 🙂

36 minutes ago, GeoffM54 said:

I've just bought a new ZWO ASI224MC camera, which doesn't have a UV/IR cut filter, do I need one?

Colours will come out wrong if you don't use an IR cut filter.

13 minutes ago, Navixc said:

I found a 80mm(F400) refractor and a 80mm(F800) reflector at my local astronomical store.

 

The aperture is same, so I am confused which one to buy.

I wouldn't buy either, especially not the reflector.  The 80mm f5 refractor will be best suited to low-power wide views.  An 80mm f10 refractor (suitably mounted) would be a better buy.  If your budget is very low, your money might be better spent on a pair of 10x50 binoculars.

If he has to make up the observatory-shed to your order, rather than supplying from stock, it is reasonable to ask for a deposit. Likewise if delivery is involved.  On the other hand, it is wise to make due diligence checks.  Reviews? Answers the phone? Discloses a street address? Has a website? Company House listing?

Why does the supplier not accept credit or debit cards? 99% of traders do, even street traders and 'Big Issue' sellers.

Also check that the site where the shed is to go is what the supplier is expecting. Concrete base?

1 hour ago, stafford_stargazer said:

I heard matsukovs are good planetary scopes,is this not true?

Yes, they are, but a mini-Dobsonian of similar aperture (130 or 150mm) might also fill the bill and could be cheaper and equally portable.

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.

8 minutes ago, tezz said:

I think I have got it now.

So either I can look through the barlow and\or put the camera in it?

If the above is true. What do I need to but to use both at the same time?

I want to try everything     Sorry I am a pain.

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.

3 hours ago, tezz said:

So how would I use my Barlow 2x and camera at the same time?

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.

1 hour ago, tezz said:

Which  off-axis guider should I buy that includes everything I need?

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.

14 minutes ago, M40 said:

Just to add, without the star sense you will need to polar align the telescope, I  can’t help you with your handset as I have never used one of those but someone will be able to help there. But just to speed things up a little once you have it aligned, put some marks on the floor where the tripod feet go as it will help the next time you set up.

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. 

12 hours ago, chubster1302 said:

Used to have a Celestron C8 ( I think it was)

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.

1 hour ago, tezz said:

It has wireless so I don't need to pick up the phone for help(I live alone)

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.

On 27/01/2023 at 14:33, SteveWolves said:

I am going to help someone sell this, can anyone tell me the model please.? I can not identify the mount, may have better pics tomorrow.

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.

1 hour ago, fullmoon said:

Is it normal for this mount/telescope  to be so rocky? I'm struggling to focus in on things as the target is bouncing around the eyepiece like a 90's raver everytime I touch the focus wheel. Everything's nice and tight. Again after some advice from another member. 

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

3 hours ago, 1200Si said:

What mount would allow me to take pictures of the common solar system objects without trails, and also just fit my camera directly on to it for wide field shots.

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..