Cosmic Geoff
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Posts posted by Cosmic Geoff
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A dew shield for a Maksutov or SCT should be regarded as a standard item, not an optional extra. Manufacturers clearly do not like to include them because it makes their product look big and naff. But all refractors have dew shields. 🙂
As others have said, it is easy to make a dew shield out of cardboard etc if you don't want to pay for a smarter looking one.
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Mechanical and optical parts will last indefinitely if well cared for. Electronic parts may fail or become obsolete sooner than mechanics or optics. That includes older cameras - even if they work fine you may find that the utilities don't work on anything later than Winows XP.
But I expect you will be looking mainly at 'nearly new' gear in which case, as suggested above, if it looks good and the seller seems reliable, then the gear is probably OK.
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I suggest you read the other threads on this forum where a similar question was posed, and look at the 'Beginner scopes' offered by forum sponsor FLO.
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A new SCT should not need collimating, but it is worth checking that the collimation is in fact good. A star should look like a point, or with a high power eyepiece like a tiny dot with circles around it (in good seeing). (This assumes you have a good quality eyepiece, not one of those starter kit things. Which is one reason I suggested buying a good eyepiece). When out of focus, a star should look like a circle with a hole in the middle. It should not look like a badminton shuttle.
If you suspect this is the problem, I suggest you contact your dealer for advice, rather than trying to correct the problem yourself.
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I thought I would describe my EEVA setup in hopes that it will help or inspire anybody who is interested in EEVA and wondering what to do.
102mm F5 'Startravel' achromatic refractor, ASI224MC USB3 planetary camera, EQ5 Synscan GoTo mount, Sharpcap 4 software, Dell Vostro laptop (7th edition, i5 processor, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, 42WH battery)
None of this, except the laptop, was bought with EEVA in mind.
The refractor - there are better refractors, but this model is cheap, quite well made, and the chromatic aberration etc is not too obvious in this role. The f-ratio matches the camera well, giving a ~0.5 deg. field.
The camera - this is a sensitive camera with low noise. A bigger sensor would give a wider FOV but would cost more.
The mount - as many of you will have learnt the hard way, Synscan mounts are not easy to use, but the plate-solve & resync available in Sharpcap 4 transforms this mount from an annoying and inaccurate ornament to a really useful tool. I previously used a SLT mount but while easier to use it was less stable.
Sharpcap 4 - installed when I upgraded to this laptop. I originally got Sharpcap 3 for planetary imaging but it works just as well for EEVA, and the plate-solving available via this version is great.
In a recent outing, this setup was highly productive and I was able to 'see' and record quite a large number of objects in 2 hours. Aimed at Mizar, it separated the 14" double onscreen with ease.
In terms of objects made visible, this competes with much larger visual telescopes and has shown me objects I have never seen with anything else, including M1, M33 and Pluto.
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2 hours ago, ianoliver said:
So do you recommend I return the eyepiece as not being usable?
Not unless you have incontovertible evidence that it's faulty. Anyway those 10mm starter eyepieces are all poor. Just buy a better one.
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21 minutes ago, PeterC65 said:
Yes. To have GOTO on an AZ mount with a load capacity of more than 5kg the lowest cost option seems to be the Sky-Watcher AZ EQ5-GT GOTO Mount which is £1200. So quite a big spend just for the mount and then I'd need a suitably large OTA.
There is an Ioptron alt-az GoTo mount which is a little cheaper.
Check out the price of a used Celestron C8 SE GoTo outfit. This is an 8" SCT with alt-az GoTo and if you are only interested in visual should tick several of your boxes. They often go for far less than the cost of a new one.
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To see galaxies beyond those you mention you need dark skies. What are the skies like at your location?
I took my 8" SCT to rural Devon a couple of times and could see far more galaxies than at home.
I also put together a video- assisted astronomy outfit with a 102mm Startravel, an ASI224MC planetary camera and a GoTo mount, and this proved startlingly effective at detecting faint objects at my home location, detecting a whole lot of galaxies I could not see visually even with an 8" SCT at my home location.
22 minutes ago, PeterC65 said:If the mount cannot handle a bigger aperture and I need to abandon GOTO then I would instead choose a 10" Dobsonian such as the StellaLyra 10" Dobsonian and just go big on aperture.
I assume you mean abandon GoTo on grounds of cost. If you are working in light-polluted skies you may be disappointed at the number of galaxies visible with a 10", and also frustrated at the difficulty of finding anything without a GoTo. Your choice, of course. I recently uprated my EEVA mount to a EQ5 Synscan and added software for platesolving and resync, which quickly places objects (visible or not) right in the middle of the FOV.
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The answer will depend on the total load. The laptop might be the most tricky item to power in the field, but a modern laptop with SSD will image for several hours without an external power supply. Older models with hard drive consume a lot more power.
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The kit 10mm and 9mm eyepieces from Celestron and Sky-watcher do not have a good reputation. I'm surprised you find it that bad, but you would find it worthwhile to invest in another 10mm eyepiece of better quality, plus a 25mm to fill out your range, as an absolute minimum.
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1 hour ago, Ash1e said:
Ok. In week give it a try once the weather clears here. It’s heavily overcast since the past 3 days.
Why wait on the weather? You can do the suggested test indoors.
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19 minutes ago, WinchesterAstro said:
Would I see a significant improvement in quality if by buying a new Barlow?
Not necessarily. If you were using a kit eyepiece of 9 or 10mm focal length for the higher-magnification views, this would explain the poor performance, as these eyepieces are not much good and should be replaed by something better.
I bought a Celestron Omni barlow lens to replace a kit Sky-watcher Barlow and found there was no difference at all.
A daylight view would inevitably be darker at higher magnifications, and the 'seeing' would also affect the view.
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I looked again at dusk and around 5pm, and saw the crescent moon, Jupiter and (with binoculars) Saturn and Mercury, but not Venus. I have seen Mercury with the naked eye on other apparitions - one needs to look in the right place at the right time in good conditions.
Venus is at inferior conjunction on the 8th Jan, a few degrees N. of the Sun.
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This afternoon I managed to observe the Sun (no sunspots), Venus ( a large and very thin crescent) Mercury (a dot), Jupiter, and the new Moon.
127mm Mak SLT, solar system align on Sun (using full aperture solar filter for this).
Quite a good bag on one of the first clear days in almost a month.
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OK, that's your lead. So have you done the test I suggested above?
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IIRC I bought a cheap battery-powered drive for mine and it attached to the side of the mount not visible in the photo. It was not a very good RA drive. 🙁
See 'Meade Motor drive' post in this forum section for a similar setup.
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If you want the best response, try re-posting the image in a format we can actually open. 🙁
I used to have a Lidl mount.
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I have not seen the Celestron Starsense Explorers in the metal, but these are not GoTo scopes, just manual scopes with a clever pointing aid.
The 5" and 6" SCTs are good telescopes, but rather different from a Newtonian, They have a f10 focal ratio but are much shorter than a Newtonian of the same aperture, and cost more to manufacture. They have a large focusing range which often proves useful with accessories.
57 minutes ago, Thomas Burgess said:but I guess a proper mount.
I don't think so. I think the mounts will be in the lightweight portable or 'starter' class.
An EQ5 Synscan, a Celestron AVX or an Evolution would be my idea of a 'proper mount'.
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I use my cheap 10x50 bresser binoulars while wearing varifocals.
As for the double image, seeing two stars where there should be one is a symptom of the binoculars needing collimation. This happened with my Berssers, and this issue is more obvious when looking at stars, than in the daytime when your eyes will find it easier to combine the images.
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3 hours ago, Ash1e said:
And the connection pin is a solid 5.5mm and not 5.5x2.5.
It is not clear what you mean. The correct plug has a 5.5 mm overall diameter and a 2.1 mm inner (a hole). The point I am trying to make is that these plugs are liable to give a poor connection, as I have experienced with more than one mount, unless the cable is restrained to stop it pulling on or twisting the cable, or unless the inner pin on the mount is fettled to give a better contact.
The amp-hours of the lead-acid battery is irrelevant, except that it prompts me to ask: did you make up your own lead and plug? In which case you could have used the wrong plug, as a previous post suggests.
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Before you send it back, turn it on and wiggle the power lead where it plugs into the mount. See if anything bad happens on the display. If it does, check you have the right plug (see previous post) and consider attaching a cable tie to stop the cable moving at the plug.
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1 hour ago, Ceebee58 said:
a Startravel 120 on an AZ Goto mount
I'm curious to know what mount. At 6Kg the Startravel falls into a gap between cheap but inadequate GoTo mounts and adequate but very expensive alt-az GoTo mounts.
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Some time ago I acquired a better quality Circle T diagonal for my Maksutov, replacing the budget diagonal that was part of the kit. I could not see any improvement in quality when viewing.
Elsewhere I have read that spending money on costly diagonals gets you better build quality and durability rather than any obvious visual improvement.
Later I bought a new £50 Celestron Omni barlow to try instead of the cheap kit Sky-watcher one. Again I could not see any difference at all, either visually or when doing planetary imaging.
On the basis of this, you should expect to see little or no difference should you upgrade, rather than an obvious improvement.
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https://tejraj.com/pdf/EXOS2_GOTO-Manual.pdf
Does this help?
Sky-Watcher 150P-DS & Explore Scientific IEXOS-100 PMC-Eight eq a good combo?
in Getting Started Equipment Help and Advice
Posted
What is your budget? The entry level outfits with GoTo will not offer a significantly bigger aperture than you already have. If you want a (visual) outfit with a non-wobble GoTo mount and a useful increase in aperture on your existing scope, brace yourself for some major expense. You could also look at Dobsonian mounts fitted with GoTo or digital setting circles- not any cheaper but might appeal to you.