Cosmic Geoff

To give this scope a GoTo mount, you would have to discard the mount and tripod, and attach a dovetail bar to the tube rings so you can attach the scope to the GoTo mount. You probably don't want to know what this would cost, unless you can find a used GoTo mount offered cheaply. You can check the pricing of Skywatcher GoTo mounts from forum sponsor FLO.

1 hour ago, MARS1960 said:

What alt/az mount could you only manage 5secs? Or did I dream of reading 90secs on alt/az was easily achievable under 400mm, I hope not as I see this as my only option to continue the hobby, thanks.

I can only speak for my own particular setup and sky. The ASI224MC is so sensitive that an exposure of a few seconds either gets a result or starts recording the bright sky background. I have not actually seen any field rotation. (This is with the Celestron SLT mount.)

The bigger scope would be better for planetary imaging.  The 4SE has a potentially useful built-in flip mirror and a mount and tripod that should be more stable than those in a lot of the entry level outfits.  For planetary imaging, a dedicated planetary video camera would work better than a DSLR.

You want to attach the DSLR camera and lens to the mount in place of the telescope? I don't know how well that would work.  You would have to construct some sort of adapter incorporating a dovetail bar.

I don't know how long an exposure you could usefully use with this setup. I know that a 102mm f5 achromat + ASI224MC camera + alt-az GoTo mount is good for a 5 second exposure.

Trying to buy one scope and mount that does everything is a really bad idea. The requirements for various tasks differ widely, so if you want to cover all tasks effectively you need more than one scope and maybe more than one mount.

The 6" SCT OTA is a fine scope for general observing, and for planetary imaging, but unless you are an expert with astrophotograpy experience you should get a small short focal length ED or APO refractor for deep space imaging, as it will give a wider field and be much easier to use.  (and the SCT is not good if you want a wide field of view for visual).

Likewise the mount - for visual use an alt-azimuth GoTo will be adequate and will be quicker and easier to set up than an equatorial.  The SE mount would be adequate but there is IIRC the option of an Evolution mount which is of better quality.  You can also get lighter (and cheaper) GoTo mounts bundled with this OTA, bur unless you are particularly tolerant of wobble-mounts you may come to regret this choice.

You only need an equatorial mount for deep space imaging with long exposures, where it is needed to avoid field rotation.  If your primary interest is in general visual observing, you might find that having to polar align the mount and have the scope get into odd positions when aimed at some objects is a bit annoying.  I have found that my EQ5 GoTo can work fine on one side of the sky, but when it does a 'meridian flip'  to the other side of the sky, the accuracy declines to the point where I can't find stuff.

You may note that Russ above has two scopes and two mounts, and other enthusiasts have even more.

In contrast to Russ I found that a dew shield works fine 99% of the time - different local micro-climate?

I should think that a GoTo that slews at 60x siderial would be fairly useless.   And if you de-clutch it you will have lost the GoTo alignment.

If you don't want to invest £300+ in the Skywatcher Synscan upgrade, a more sensible option on a low budget might be not to have GoTo at all, but to motorise the RA and Dec axes.  You can do planetary imaging perfectly well with a RA motor drive, and you don't need GoTo for guided imaging, though admittedly the performance of guided GoTo mounts is said to be better.  And you should be able to do EVAA without GoTo provided you can actually find the objects, for which I recommend a good RACI finder + a red-dot finder.

If you are thinking of buying, rather than just asking, the Evolution is a better quality mount but the tripods may be of similar gauge and stiffness. In photos the tripods look much the same.

the 'Clear Outside' App tells me it is a Bortel 6. I can see mag 3 stars with naked eyes but not beyond. 

Under these conditions, loooking for galaxies will be mostly a waste of time. You need to go to a dark skies area, or try some EEVA,  An ASI224MC camera attached to a 102mm f5 refractor on a GoTo mount has a usable field of view and works surprisingly well in unpromising conditions.  Spring is the best galaxy season in the northern hemisphere.

Nowadays, with various purpose-made astro cameras available, I think the idea of converting webcams is becoming obsolete. I have only tried repurposing a  planetary video camera for EEVA, but I think you get what you pay for... An ASI224MC works well, but the sensor is small, and a camera with a bigger sensor would cost even more money.

The problem with this scheme, which those who have not tried it may not appreciate, is the size of the sensor, typically 5mm across, or the equivalent of a high-powered eyepiece, which poses severe problems in finding the target, even with a GoTo mount.   If the appearance of the target does not make it a no-brainer, there is also the problem of knowing whether you have acquired the target or not...  which is where plate-solving comes in useful.

Then there is the problem of focusing. with the camera and eyepiece focus points effectively separated by several mm, if one swaps the eyepiece for a camera, the target is likely to remain invisible. (I once wasted an early-morning hour trying to get Jupiter on screen - it was merely out of focus).  A flip mirror diagonal assembly (another 100 GBP or so) will help with target-finding and focusing.

If you want a large sensor, you might already have one in the form of a DSLR - but this may not be as easy to use as a dedicated large chip astro camera. Recent DSLRs have a 'live view' screen attached.

In principle it is possible to remote control the kit, as a disability aid, but technically this is likely to prove very challenging and to require a permanent setup. 

A powered observing chair might be an easier option. 🙂

1 hour ago, Stu1smartcookie said:

Why was it disappointing , Geoff ? Obviously one has to see it for what it is 

I think mine had a Friday afternoon objective. Other owners seem to have had better luck.  I suppose the mount is typical of budget outfits but I did not like it.

I used to have a Bresser Skylux 70/700 - it is in my signature image. Performance was disappointing and I eventually realised that the objective lens was no good. As for the mount, it made me determined to avoid EQ-2 mounts in the future.  I later acquired a 70mm vintage brass Ross scope which performed far better.

If you want to find an object with a C8 + ASI224 you really need to centre it in an eyepiece and then switch to the camera (which is what a flip mirror assembly is for), or have an accurately setup optical finder.  

I have also found out that with this combination a live stack often fails to work because of 'not enough stars'.

I have no idea why your stars look like seagulls but it looks like something was seriously awry.

On 25/06/2021 at 19:23, GMFoods said:

Couldn't say what it is without getting it down from the attic.

I think it's a skywatcher, it needed weights to counter-balance the scope, and from what I remember it looks like a 650 mm x 130 mm reflector.

Yeah I should probably get it down and set it up again, but I think ultimately it would just end up in the same place after a few weeks, so wanting something that's an all in one unit that's easy to get out and use, and just as easy to put away.

Why not get it down and check it out? For the cost of  the Orion or Zhumell, you could buy a decent alt-azimuth grab'n go mount for your existing scope and maybe end up with a better outfit than if you had bought anew?  If you don't want the usual metal tripod etc you can IIRC buy a table-top Dob mount on its own for not much money.

And a 5x Powermate is just for astrophotography - and in good seeing at that.

TBH I think focal reducers are mainly intended for imaging. And a 0.5 reducer seems rather extreme. If a f5, 6" or 8" scope is what you really want, perhaps you should think of getting a f5 Newtonian instead.   However in a light polluted area there is not much you can do with a f5 scope visually that you can't do with a f10, other than look at wide star clusters.

At your home site you should concentrate on looking at smaller objects of high surface brightness: planets, double stars, planetary nebulae, globular clusters, rather than low surface brigtness objects like galaxies and nebulae that will not show up well.

Consider buying the matching IR pass filter, which will allow you to take infrared images with the camera.  The processed images will be monochrome but often sharper than those taken in colour.

Without a measure of the light pollution in your area, it is hard to comment, but you may have to manage your expectations.  It is hard to see more than a handful of galaxies from a moderately light-polluted area, even with an 8" SCT.  And a near full moon will not be at all helpful.

In darkest Devon, I found that I could see lots of galaxies with my 8" SCT, and I got tired and cold before I ran out of galaxies to look at.  But generally they look like faint grey smudges.  I deliberately visited at a time with minimal interference from the Moon.  The Spring is the best time for galaxy viewing.

I have found that electronically assisted astronomy is a much better way of seeing galaxies, as a 4" refractor with planetary camera and laptop attached, showed about as many galaxies at my home site as the bigger telescope did at a dark location. I went through a list of galaxies down to mag 10 to 11 and it picked up every one.

That depends on the camera - you can probably mount the camera as a 1.25", 2", or threaded format, and I imagine a 1.25"powermate would be cheaper.   But then you would need the 1.25" to 2" adapter.  But if you have an ADC (dispersion corrector) in the train, that would probably be 1.25".

56 minutes ago, Emdeejay said:

You're suggestion of an extension tube might help, I was thinking maybe it needed a tube with a few inches since everyone says how the binos create a 100mm optical path etc, but I didn't know if you can just get an extension tube that isn't a Barlow. Also yes I'm using a 1.25 inch diagonal and also it's not the HD so I don't have those knobs... Ugh, I hope I can figure this out, I really wanna be able to use those. 

You do NOT need an extension tube to make the binoviewer work with a SCT.  I should know.🙂 Read my previous post.🙂

For a refractor you need LESS tube length, and the focuser may or may not accomodate this, depending on the particular hardware involved.

At a typical site, Starsense will locate the planets for you. However you don't need any fancy kit to locate the brighter planets - Jupiter, Venus and Mars as they outshine the brightest stars.  Today however, Jupiter and Saturn are visible only in the early morning and Venus in the evening twilight just after sunset.  The Starsense smartphone app is nothing to do with the Starsense hardware - it just uses the same software scheme to plate-solve the sky, and the licesnse is sold along with an entry level scope kit and a smartphone holder.

I would advise you not to buy the Starsense hardware as it will probably not work at your location (too much stray light).  Instead I suggest you persist with the basic GoTo alignment scheme.   Even if you can only see the Moon or one bright star, you can do a Solar System align on the Moon or a one-star alignment on the bright star (assuming you know what it is. 🙂)  To make this work effectively you will have to accurately level your tripod, placing a spirit level across the top flat surface, or using the bubble level that came with the scope kit (after checking its accuracy with a bubble level).

If you can identify two bright stars by name, you can use the more accurate two star auto align.

The field of view of a C6 is quite small, so you are unlikely to find much of interest by pointing it randomly at the sky.

I have used a binoviewer with both my 127mm Mak and mv C8 SE. The binoviewers add about 100mm to the optical path, so you have to wind the focus knob a lot to compensate for this, but these scopes will handle this. The lengthened optical path will increase the magnification.  You do not need a Barlow lens, unless you want more magnification than the pair of binoviewer eyepieces can deliver. 

If you get the scope in focus with an eyepiece (any eyepiece) as normal, and then pull out the eyepiece a few mm and refocus, this will show you which direction you have to wind the focus knob to get the binoviewer in focus.

I assume you mean the hardware device and not the more recent app.

I use it in conjuction with a C8 SE as a quick-deploy setup. The skies here are not great - nominally Bortle 6, but the Starsense usually works well.  The skies are never so light polluted here that I can't see the bright alignment stars.  The Starsense even works with some scattered cloud in the sky, but I have found that there are two things it does not like which can cause alignment to fail: an overly bright sky at dusk, and a full moon.

What brand of telescope do you own? The Starsense only works with Celestron mounts and (with an extra adapter box) Sky-watcher mounts.

If you want to view or image the planets, you should consider buying a telescope with a large aperture, e.g.  8 inch. With a 500 Euro budget that means a Dobsonian mounted newtonian, which will not be well suited for imaging.  If you opt for a smaller aperture of 4 or 5 inches, perhaps with a better mount, the views of the planets will be under-whelming.

A motor-driven equatorial mount would be sufficient for planetary imaging.  But if budget is not an obstacle, I'd recommend a Celestron CPC800 as being easy to use and a fine instrument for planetary viewing and imaging, on a rock-steady fork mount.

If you are interested in the Moon and planets, you do not need to worry about light pollution. The Moon and brighter planets are just about visible in daylight via a telescope, and you can't get more light polluted than that...

For planetary imaging you should use a camera that takes high-speed video e.g. ZWO's ASI 120MC or ASI224MC, rather than a Canon EOS.

I bought a helical focuser and a set of adapters from them - both were okay for the price. The helical focuser looked the same as one I bought from China except for the size of the adapter on the inner end.

I don't know who owns the copyright of the COAST images (you would have to read the small print to find out), but if you tried imaging yourself with a GoTo scope I expect you would find it to be a very different experience from booking a COAST session.

16 hours ago, Charis said:

and a sturdy ALT-AZ GOTO mount.

Be careful what you wish for.  The cheaper alt-az GoTo mounts are usually sold bundled with a entry level scope, and are intended for visual use with scopes weighing less than 5 Kg or so.  Then there's a big gap to the heavy duty alt-az or alt-az/EQ mounts that you can buy separately, which cost serious amounts of money.

Have you a budget? A small ED refractor will cost several hundred pounds.  A 102mm Startravel achromat will let you do some basic imaging, and it's cheap, and you can screw on a helical focuser, but it won't be as good or as versatile as an ED scope. 

You can start wilh the cheap stuff, but if you are serious about deep-space imaging you will eventually want an ED refractor and a heavy-duty equatorial GoTO mount. (and keep your entry level kit as a grab'n go?)

Some hints: Jupiter and Saturn are visible in the SSE sky, fairlly low down, before dawn.  Jupiter is too bright to miss, and Saturn is about 1st magnitude and a little eastward of Jupiter. Venus is visible to the naked eye in the north-west at dusk, very low down.

If you can identify these planets, the easiest way of observing them is to select the Solar System mode during setup and (assuming you have entered the latitude, longitude, date and time (or let the GPS unit do its thing), just align on the planet you want to observe and it will track it.  I am assuming that you have read the instruction manual for the Nexstar system and also aligned the finder.

If you can use the Two Star Auto Align, that should be able to find any of the planets for you.  Unlike some other GoTo systems, if correctly set, the Nexstar will not let you select planets that are below the horizon.

If you are having trouble focusing, aim the telescope at the brightest object (star or planet) that you can find, and  turn the focus till the donut shrinks to a point or bright planetary disk.