Cosmic Geoff

If you look at the user manual for the C8 SE it will tell you the required amperage, which IIRC is about 1.5 amps. You can use anything to power the C8 SE, provided it delivers a regulated output between 12 and 14 volts, can deliver sufficient current, and has the correct polarity. The specifications of some of these power banks need to be read with a critical eye. 30000mAH sounds more impressive than 30 Ah, and does it mean 30 AH at 12v, or 30 AH at 5 volts (if it has any 5v output) which would represent much less energy? I mainly use a Celestron LiFePo power tank for my C8 SE. Car engine starters (with a lead-acid battery) can be cheap, do the job, and are often multi-function so that they can also e.g. start your car, pump up the tyres, or provide light. I also found that a 7 AH sealed lead-acid battery, when new, would provide enough energy for several evening's viewing with the C8 SE or 127 SLT.

The dovetail used on the C6 SE and C8 SE (known as a Vixen dovetail) is a standard size, so will be the same width on the 6 SE and 8 SE OTAs. I don't know why your 6inch tube should have a 8" CGE dovetail on it , or what size that is. If you buy a 8 SE tube it will have a Vixen dovetail on it because that is part of the C8 SE kit. (unless the seller has removed the dovetail to annoy you). If the 8" tube is actually from some other Celestron package, it might be fitted with the wider Losmandy dovetail. I don't know whether the HEQ5 Pro accepts the Vixen or the Losmandy dovetail - maybe both. You will have to look it up. BTW the colours of the Celestron SCT tubes usually indicate which kit they were bundled with when new, e.g. SE = orange.

Which tripod do you have?

Buyer regret after an expensive purchase is very common. Shouldn't I have bought 'x' instead? Did I really want a car with more electronics than a Stealth bomber? Sometimes the regret wears off, and one comes to appreciate the new purchase, otherwise you can always sell it on.

But not too heavy for the Evolution mount? I guess it depends on what you are trying to achieve: visual, planetary imaging, or deep space imaging.

Results will depend on the particular instruments and the seeing. Some people will insist that their favorite instrument type performs best. At one time I had an 8" newtonian and an 8" SCT and contrary to popular wisdom, the SCT performed somewhat better on double stars.

At the CES electronics show the Unistellar Odyssey and Odyssey Pro were revealed. Apparently they are smartphone controlled, and the Pro also comes with a conventional eyepiece. Claimed to show nebulae etc even in light-polluted inner city areas. Available now at £2199 and £3499. (reference Pc Pro issue 354)

You are advised to replace the 10mm eyepiece with a better quality eyepiece (aim to spend about £50), which should give you a noticeable improvement in resolution on double stars and planets. There is no urgent need to buy anything else. With a focal ratio of around f10 or f12, your scope will be easy on eyepieces and there should be no need to buy exotic eyepieces with three figure price tags. If you want to buy widefield eyepieces, that's up to you. You should buy or make a dew shield if you do not have one already. If you live in an urban area with the associated light pollution, faint fuzzy objects will be a disappointment.

You could, but because of the weight capacity of the mount, it will have to be a small one, of lesser aperture than the orange tube. And unless it is a very small one, you will not be able to aim near the zenith, even when using a diagonal. So why bother?

I have the smaller Startravel - the 102mm f5, (which I also use with an ASI224MC) and find it has significant chromatic aberration which shows up when imaging brighter stars. (One can anticipate that the chromatic aberration will be worse with the larger ST120.) I use the ST102 for EVAA imaging of galaxies and star clusters and do not feel it is fit for much else. With the small chip camera, no field flattener is necessary, and f5 is fast enough. TBH, the amount of pricey looking red kit you have attached to your ST120 would be better used with a small ED or APO refractor. A smaller aperture than 120mm, along with a DSLR or large chip astro camera would be more suited to deep space imaging. To image planets, a long focal length telescope, ASI224MC and a laptop would be sufficient.

As Robert suggests, this is a very entry level low quality telescope. The suggested max magnification of x525 is a joke. If you buy three eyepieces of good quality and a red dot finder, expect to spend at least $150. Your money would be better spent on a complete outfit of better quality, as suggested.

Passband graph for Astronomik UHC: Astronomik UHC Filter Passband graph for Baader Neodymium: Baader Neodymium (Moon & Skyglow) Filter (baader-planetarium.com)

Planetary imaging does not require the ultimate in mount stability. It's nice if the mount does not jitter about when you are trying to focus, but the planetary images I took with a Celestron SE 6/8 mount were often just as good as those taken with a CPC800.

Live stacking or post-stacking of a series of short exposures can work well with alt-azimuth mounts. See the results from the Seestar S50, for instance. Of course, the extremities of the image degrade with longer exposure runs, but can be cropped off. It depends what one is trying to image. If gathering hours of data on something faint, an equatorial mount would be more appropriate.

There are two questions you should ask when looking at a light pollution filter: 1) What kind of light pollution do I have in my area? Sodium or mercury lamps? LEDs? Other? 2) What exactly does this filter do? What wavelengths does it pass? or block? If you have a diffraction grating or prism to play with, you can actually see what is being emitted by local lights.

Getting the images from the Seestar to a PC is a no-brainer - just use the USB cable supplied and Windows Explorer. That's assuming you set the Seestar to store separate images rather than stacked. Most of the 'how to' videos involve using Siril, which is a powerful program but almost impossible to use without detailed instructions. I found it easier to do the initial stacking in Deep Sky Stacker. TBH I have only tried to 'improve' the images where the smartphone image had airplane tracks or was not saved at all. You will have to look on this forum in the Seestar thread for general tips, and on Youtube for processing videos, as the ZWO manuals do not tell you much besides how to turn it on. ☹️

Why do you want to extend the OTA about 50mm further forward? Are you attaching bulky gear to the back end of the OTA? I had obstruction with my CPC800 when attaching focal reducer + flip mirror diagonal + camera. A solution was to dispense with the flip mirror and use a regular diagonal and precise GoTo. If it's the same clamp as on the C8 SE, the OTA will not go any further forward unless you also move it sideways.

What do you mean by a 'compound scope'? The point about 2" eyepieces is that if you want a low-power eyepiece with a wide field of view, e.g. 30mm fl, the resulting size of the lenses means it won't fit into the 1.25" format, hence 2". But a 10mm eyepiece will fit easily into the 1.25" format, so there is no point in making a 2" version. 2" eyepieces are generally heavier and more expensive. Adapters that fit a 1.25" eyepiece into a 2" focuser are readily available.

I found that the GoTo of the 6/8 SE mount works well.

I keep mine indoors fully assembled and with the tube horizontal. I don't think it matters where the tube points, but horizontal is the starting point for the Starsense Autoalign. Note that because of its bulk which makes it awkward to grip and handle, removing the tube from the mount is not a clever idea. I have been carrying mine in and out fully assembled for years and it has not done it any harm.

If you are not able to handle one of these scopes in the metal before buying, you could find some cardboard and a couple of bricks to make up a dummy of the same length x width x height + weight, and see how you feel about carrying it downstairs and onto a bus. 🙂

No need to deploy fresh hardware. There are many present and past sky surveys, e.g. PanSTARRS and Gaia. Anyone looking for anomalous objects could trawl through the vast amount of data already accumulated. I agree with the revisionist view that Pluto is a minor planet. I have managed to image and identify it a couple of times.

+1 for a Seestar. It will work well for imaging emission nebulae even in a city, giving you far better views than you could hope to get visually. It will also work on other DSO's, especially if you can take it to a darker site, which would be easy to do, since it is small, very portable, and comes in a carry case. Be aware that galaxies will be a disappointment visually, and barely visible unless you have a scope of significant aperture at a dark skies site. All I can see of galaxies from my urban location is a grey smudge representing the central nucleus of a few of the brightest ones. But if I use EVAA (q.v.) it's a different story.🙂

I suggest that you look at the threads on this site and elsewhere to see what the Seestar and other smart scopes achieve in practice. The Seestar can stack for a surprisingly long time without field rotation becoming an issue. And one user claims to have figured out how to make it perform in equatorial mode. For smart scopes in general, the main thing to look at is the achieved field of view. The Seestar, for instance, uses a small sensor, so the field of view is smaller than it potentially could be (but the Moon still fits in the FOV). If you want planetary imaging, look elsewhere, as you will only get impressive planetary images with a long focal length and large aperture. Note that the less popular models may have software & firmware that is not as polished as with some others. Read the reviews. Some of the smartscopes seem quite expensive. The test here is how much would it cost to put together a rig with the same performance, using separately bought parts (i.e a traditional imaging rig). Some smartscopes might fail this test, but the Seestar can only be beaten by spending far more than its £550 asking price, which is why it has proved so popular.

There are a number of smart telescopes on the market now, ranging from ZWO's Seestar S50, which appears to be wildly outselling all the others, to Celestron's £4000 6 inch aperture offering. What attracts you to the two you have mentioned? What are you expecting a smart scope to do for you?