Cosmic Geoff

I manage to use my astro equipment without using a laser, so anyone in the UK who uses one and gets his collar felt by the police will get no sympathy from me at all.

I have a Synscan V5 handset which has a USB port in it, but there is a USB-to serial adapter inside the handset, so before you can connect up the handset with a USAB A-B cable, you need to install a Prolific chipset driver for the Usb-serial, which in turn requires the ASCOM platform to be installed first. I speculate that the new port on the box has the same issue. The handset port should show up in Device Manager, but with an indication that it needs a driver.

With the Nexstar+ and Synscan handsets that incorporate a USB port, it is not what it seems. With the Synscan V5 handset there is a serial-to USB in the handset and this requires a driver - you need to install a Prolific chipset driver which is a rigmarole as you have to first install the ASCOM platform. Evidently the same remarks apply to the newer Nexstar+ handsets but I do not have the details for installing the driver. If you do not install a driver you clearly cannot use the "USB port".

And preventing anything from being visible via the eyepiece, if in the wrong position?

So far as I recall, the dovetail-to-rings bolts are metric M5 or M6. I reworked my bar a bit so that I could slide the bar into the grip of a SLT mount, which required a countersink bolt, and later moved one of the rings along so that the tube could be shifted forward to counterbalance the weight of a DSLR. Both bolts are now countersunk.

I got a Svbony helical focuser for my Startravel ST102. (cost £30) It screws on the back of the 2"/1.25" adapter (T2 connection). I have used it a few times - seems an improvement on the standard R+P focuser action. My feeling about a replacement focuser is that If I needed to spend that much on upgrading a basic achromat I should have bought an ED with a dual speed focuser in the first place.

From a city you can most easily telescopically see objects of high surface brightness. That includes the Moon, planets, double stars and some globular clusters. You will see very few galaxies unless you go in for EEVA (q.v) That should be easy to check before you do anything else. If you can't see three bright objects with your unaided eyes, you may as well give up the whole idea now. If you go up there and count how many stars you can see, that will give us all some idea of the severity of the problem. Any nearby lights, e.g. on the roof, will have some adverse effect. The less ambient light you have to contend with , the better.

Give us an idea of where you will be observing from (your balcony? A local park?) and what degree of portability you have in mind. Do you favour a plain old-fashioned telescope and mount, or the latest tech with GoTo?

I have no opinion of the Starsense Explorer app, but have regularly used the £300 hardware Starsense accessory. As for the telescope, take note of the negative comments about it above. Astronomy is not a cheap hobby, and a telescope costing £200 or less is liable to be a disappointment. Some of them are frankly sold as a lure for the inexperienced and unwary. For beginners with small pockets we recommend the Skywatcher Heritage 130p as having good optics, but I have seen even this one criticised for having cut-price features, and you may have difficulty finding one in stock anywhere. I suggest buying binoculars (I bought a ridiculously cheap pair of 10x50 from Lidl that are quite usable) or some second-hand telescope that you are prepared to replace as soon as you have learnt what you can from it about handling a telescope and finding objects in the night sky.

As a Nexstar user, I would say that you just need to get the mount roughy level (it needs to be more exact for a one-star or solar syetem align), power up the mount enter time/date and start the alignment procedure. You do not need to have the scope pointing anywhere in particular beforehand (pointing it North sounds like part of another manufacturer's prodedure). Provided you have entered the various data properly (a very common cause of problems) you should get it to align without issues. I think this applies to another manufacturer's setup procedure. The Nexstar does not work this way. You have to align it on the first star yourself by using the direction buttons. If you do not have the printed instruction manual fro mount and handset, download it and follow the instructions. I suspect that you are assuming the alignment procedure is other than it actually is. A Celestron Nexstar alt-az GoTO is one of the easiest mount designs to align. Good luck and clear skies!

I have never heard of this being done. I am sure it's possible in principle, but seems more trouble than it's worth. Why not put a Newtonian of the appropriate size on your EQ-5 mount?

You do not have to buy a Maksutov with the entry level tripod, and Goto. Other options are available (subject to delivery problems), if you buy the items separately. As for "the inability to find DSOs fainter than Orion and Pleiades cluster", this sounds lile some urban reviewers' hyperbole. If you take it to a dark skies site you will see plenty of DSOs. You could just buy both scopes, as the smaller and handier scope will complement the heavier light-bucket.

Most of these slow-motion extension controls fit a standard 6mm diameter shaft. Electronic knobs with grub screws made to fit a 1/4" (6.3mm) shaft will also work.

I see your problem. The mount does not look like it was designed for a reflector. I would not worry about the 'dials'- you can look up what setting cirlclea are for and how they work, but the short answer is that on a mount like this they are pretty useless anyway. I suggest rotating the tube in the tube rings so that the finder is at the bottom and the telescope eyepiece is on the other side. You may have to rotate the tube anyway to conveniently observe in various points of the sky. Consider drilling holes so you can move the finder, or get a second, red-dot finder that you can stick on the tube in a convenient position.

If you live in a Bortle 6 area, you will see few galaxies and even fewer nebulae with a telescope of this size. Your eyepieces and collimation are not the issue. Narrowband filters will help on nebulae with strong emission lines, otherwise no. I suggest you either find a dark skies site you can observe from, or investigate what you can do with EEVA. I have found that this delivers startling resulkts from an urban area, almost matching the visual performance of a larger scope at a dark site. See the EEVA Reports sub-section of the forum here.

We need more detail in order to help you. Give us a picture of your outfit, and the telescope model number.

Aetherum - check this section to see what I imaged with the same 102mm achro scope as yours, and a basic alt-azimuth GoTo mount. https://stargazerslounge.com/forum/123-eeva-reports/

An +18v charger will most likely kill your mount. Ubdating the firmware is unlikely to be as simple as connecting a USB lead, and as I said this is unlikely to fix the problem. Firmware update is not a cure all.

All is not lost - with an AZ GoTo mount, a small telescope, a suitable camera and a laptop, you can take shots of a few seconds, single or live-stacked, of various objects, to extend the capabilities of your telescope. See the EVAA section here.

Not as far as I know, but if you get a wifi module and control it from a tablet etc with GPS, that might work (but don't quote me or ask me how), or you can buy a Celestron GPS module, but that is expensive. You only have to set the location once, unless you plan to travel around.

The dovetail bar in your photo is already drilled and tapped. That is the sort of thing they are referring to. When I had a 203mm f5 Newtonian on an EQ-5, it had a long dovetail bar like that. And it did not slip.

Firstly replace the batteries with a proper +12v power supply. If you insist on using batteries, get a fresh set of Duracells. 8 for £1 from Poundland won't be powerful enough. Stalling while moving is also typically caused by some bad-contact cable issue. Don't rush to update the firmware - it never causes this sort of problem. If you try updating the mount with suspect power or cables, you could kill your mount permanently.

I have used several mounts, dovetails and telescopes over the years and have not had any trouble with the dovetail slipping in the clamp. Unless you point the telescope straight up, the dovetail will tend to jam rather than slip. On the contrary, with one mount I have had difficulty in releasing the clamp with cold hands at the end of a session. Some Sky-watcher mount clamps have an extra small screw which is presumably intended as a safety backup. I suggest that you simply take the usual care in doing up the clamps (and don't undo the wrong one to move the telescope manually in Dec! 😲) Note that you will have to move the telescope in the clamp to balance cameras, etc.

Welcome! There is a section in this forum entitled 'What can I expect to see'. Various monthly guides of what to look at are available online.

My experience is that the leveling of an alt-azimuth mount is only critical if you are using a one star or solar system align. (I am not sure if the Star Discovery mount does a solar system align at all - with Nexstar it means aligning on one planet or the Sun - same basic method as aligning on one star.)