Cosmic Geoff

No mention of a dew shield? You need one.

Right. I am sure you will in the end be happier getting two outfits, rather than pursuing the unattainable dream of one rig fits everything. I suspect that the novelty of lugging a heavy CGX or EQ-6 mount out to the wilds and setting it up for family visual viewing will wear off quickly. Before you commit to using a 8" Edge HD with a focal reducer for imaging, check out the price of that scope's focal reducer. Even here it is eye-wateringly expensive, and I don't know much about these things but you could probably buy a decent imaging refractor for that money, I never took a deep-space image with my C8 or CPC800 that was any encouragement to go further, but I have taken a lot of pleasing images with a planetary camera on a cheap 102mm f5 achro refractor mounted on an equally cheapo SLT mount head, and managed to do things like identifying the minor planet Pluto and imaging things I could not see from here with any of my other telescopes. So I am not recommending that you start deep-space imaging with a 8" SCT.

I'm not sure if this will help you, but I acquired a second-hand SCT whih was badly out of collimation. So far as I recollect, I first took off the star diagonal and looked through the hole, adjusting the secondary mirror screws till what I could see looked concentric. Then I aimed at a star and adjusted the screws carefully till the out of focus star image changed from badminton shuttle to donut. Adjusting the screws changes the telescope aim relative to the finder.

Depends what you want to do with it. If it's purely for visual, one of the Celestron alt-az packages would be far easier to use. You don't want an equatorial unless you intend to do imaging; if you don't image, the extra complication of the equatorial with polar alignment, counterweights etc is just a drag on your time. Unless you intend to image, a CGX or NEQ6 is, I think, more mount than you need. These larger mounts are heavy. And if you do intend to image, you should start with a small short focal length refractor, not a long fl SCT In short, I suggest you get a package with an alt-az Goto mount, and if you want to image, go shopping again for entirely different kit. I have used both the Nexstar alt-az system and a Synscan equatorial Goto, and I would not recommend the latter to anyone unless there was no alternative. I have had the Synscan for a year and not got on with it at all.

I have not used either, but the Edge HD is designed for advanced imaging of small galaxies and the like, where you want correction to the edge of the field. According to some reports, there may be a quality advantage for visual use (maybe because they undergo a different finishing process), but the full-field correction is not needed for visual use, as the natural reaction of a visual observer viewing planets or double stars will be to centre them in the field. As you say, the C9.25 also has a good reputation. The standard C8 OTA is highly portable in itself, but something to watch out for is how you break down whatever OTA and mount you choose for transit. The C8 is normally kept attached to its single-arm mount head and because of its bulk it can be awkward to take it off the mount for transit and re-fit. And the orange tube C8 SE variant does not have a tube handle! The C9.25 will be a step heavier and bulkier, and less easy to handle, but if you figure out how to get it on and off its mount without dropping it, you should be okay. If there is no handy handle, you can buy an accessory bar and fix it to the tube opposite the dovetail bar. If car rides are planned, do NOT buy the CPC925 variant - that would be a great scope but its OTA/mount assembly (non-separable) is very heavy.

It is not uncommon to see a fast-moving object move across a telescope's field of view. It is almost certainly a satellite. Asteroids move much more slowly. I once observed an exceptionally fast-moving asteroid and even that required tens of minutes to detect any movement against the star background.

The heaviness of dew does vary a lot, partly with the seasons. Where are you located? Under dark skies or in an urban area? Looking for galaxies can be disappointing under urban light pollution - all you see is the bright nucleus as a grey smudge. Even under dark rural skies they look nothing like the photographs. If you look online you will be able to find a guide to the FOV of your telescope with that 12mm eyepiece - I'm guessing about half a degree. You may be surprised to learn that the full (photographic) extent of M31 is two or three degrees, so what can be seen telescopically in a bright sky is only a small fraction of it..

It is clearly a C8 SE with the orange tube and the Nexstar (not Nexstar+) handset. A common problem is that the power plug makes poor contact, causing all sorts of malfunctions as the mount moves around. A fix for this is to use a sharp knife or scalpel to slightly widen the split centre pin, and then stick a cable tie on the mount near the socket and thread the power cable through it when in use, to prevent excessive movement.

If you don't have any joy, tell us why you think it needs a service. I never heard of any C8 SE with a permanently connected handset. On mine, if you reach up under the shrouding where the cable goes in, with a small screwdriver etc you can press the catch and release the cable. The GoTo should be accurate enough to place an object somewhere in the field of a 25mm Plossl eyepiece. These mounts can be quite noisy. nexstarsite.com may have helpful information.

There is a very useful thread on the Cloudynights site. https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/684154-setup-for-skywatcher-eq6-r-pro-with-synscan-v5-controller-and-usb-ports/ This highlights the difference between the V5 Synscan handset which has a USB port and the older ones which don't, and also points out that some of the latest Synscan mounts also have a USB port. They say that much of the well-meant advice online refers to the V4 handset and older mounts. It seems that if you have the USB port(s) you can connect to a laptop using the standard A-B USB2 cable that nearly all computer users will have in their cable drawer, and not have to bother with USB to serial or special EQDIR cables. I have the V5 handset as a result of upgrading a manual mount, which is why I am interested. I did not try connecting it to a PC or laptop till recently, as so far I have found Synscan to be a pain, compared with the Nexstar alt-az system. Addendum: I have confirmed that it is possible to control the V5 handset & mount via a USB A-B cable. If you power everything up and then connect the cable, the handset appears in the Control Panel of Windows 7 as a USB-serial device. Initially no driver was indicated. After a struggle I installed the ASCOM platform and the Skywatcher handset driver (and .NET). After turning the laptop off and on, a Prolific driver for a USB-serial device, port COM6, showed up in the Control Panel, and I was then able to start a connection in Stellarium and control the mount.

The budget colour filters are of marginal usefulness - I suggest you save your money for something else. Light pollution filters are generally ineffective against the new white LED lights which emit a continuous spectrum. There is a special filter which is claimed to give SOME benefit with LED lighting, but it is expensive. I don't use a neutral denity filter on the Moon or anything else, so cannot comment. If YOU think the moon is too bright, by all mean get a filter. Whole threads here have been written here about zoom eyepieces. Look them up. Worth noting though that many of the cheaper models are clones of each other - compare the sales pictures and specs..

Putting a C8 SE on a wedge is a really bad idea. This mount is barely fit for its intended role as a visual mount, and if you put it on a wedge (presumably for imaging) it will not be fit for purpose. I used mine for planetary imaging, and found that I needed to actively guide it to keep the planet image on the camera chip (several minutes of arc in width) for a minute or so. The idea of achieving the accuracy of a second of arc or so desired for long exposure deep space imaging is , well...🤣 It is also quite difficult and time-consuming to do an accurate polar alignment with a wedge mount. People who enter this route with great enthusiasm usually give up after a while and buy a German equatorial. If you want to have a C8 OTA mounted equatorially, then buy an equatorial mount. You should be able to find one used with a little patience.

I used to have a mount equivalent to the EQ-2, and I do not consider it suitable for anything other than supporting a budget visual telescope. Serious imagers would not use an expensive EQ-6 mount laden with autoguiders and other specialist devices if they thought an EQ-2 would do. If you cannot afford a proper imaging mount what you can achieve is accordingly limited, which is why it is suggested above that you use your existing camera and lenses on a widefield tracking mount. I saw one at an astro meeting which consisted of a camera mount with a 1-axis clockwork drive.

AFAIK all GoTO mounts, whether alt-az or equatorial, will track (often far better than a motorized equatorial mount.) Whether the result is any use for astrophotography is another matter... Nowadays there is not much point in having an equatorial mount unless (a) it is for long exposure astrophotography, or (b) it's a manual mount and you want to manually track by rotation about one axis only, or (c) it's a non- GoTo mount and you want to have it made to track via a RA motor drive. If you are interested in astrophotography, you should obtain and read "Making Every Photon Count" by Steve Richards (available from FLO). It could save you from wasting a lot of effort and money. If you are content to take widefield views with a camera & camera lens (no telescope), there are various modestly priced mounts designed for that purpose.

So have you checked that the tracking is turned ON (Alt-az)?

It looks like the tracking can be turned off. See MENU/TRACKING/MODE/Off, Alt-Az, EQ North, EQ South. The instruction manual confirms this, and states that 'Off' is for terrestial viewing. If you do not have the instruction manual, I recommend that you locate and download it.

Looking for objects of low surface brightness from an urban area is rather a waste of time. I have seen galaxies, a few nebulae and planetaries from my suburban site, but they were all high surface brightness objects and I saw far more from rural Devon. Interestingly, I tried EEVA with a smaller scope (102mm) from home and was astonished to find that it revealed as much as a scope twice the size used visually at a dark skies site. It revealed the Crab nebula (M1) and M33, and the Veil nebula (just), none of which I have ever seen visually at all.

I don't know what's wrong, but even though the SLT is a rubbish imaging mount it should track well. I purposely tested mine and found it would keep an object in the low-power eyepiece field for literally hours. I can see two possibilities: a mechanical fault, or you have not carried out the aligning procedure to completion. It seems from your description that it it not tracking in azimuth. If this is a mechanical fault, then restraining or encouraging it with your hand may disclose the problem. (Note: the mount cannot normally be moved in azimuth by hand, while there is a slip clutch in altitude). It may be that the mount is not tracking at all, which will cause objects to move out of field rapidly in a minute or two. It is essential to complete the alignment procedure - with the handset you do the coarse align, then the fine align, finishing IIRC by pressing the ALIGN button, which should result in a message something like "Alignment Complete, Starpointer Off." The handset may offer eqatorial alignment options, which you should not try to use.

Could you confirm that you are performing a GoTo star alignment? (On a Nexstar+ there will be Skyalign (IIRC), 2-star, 2-star auto 1-star and solar system align available.) If you complete the alignment properly, completing all the coarse/fine/accept steps, there is no reason why it should not track. The tracking speed can be set to siderial, lunar and solar in the menus.

I have a CPC800. You will not want to hear this, but you should have got a German equatorial and another C8 OTA (or other design of OTA) instead of trying to use the CPC800 on a wedge. Wedges are okay for a permanently mounted SCT (witness their use in observatories like the one at the Open University) but not for one that is taken down at the end of each session. Forums have a number of accounts from people who have put a SCT on a wedge with great enthusiasm, then a year ot two later given up and changed to a German equatorial. I also have a Starsense, used with a C8 SE. It is great for speeding setup, but does not seem to be any more accurate in practice than a 2-star align with the basic Nexstar handset. So far as I have been able to understand it, with an equatorial GoTo, so long as you have a rough polar alignment the GoTo should work okay (e.g. for visual use) but some image rotation deleterious to long exposure imaging will occur unless the mechanical pol;ar alignment is spot on. I have tried deep sky imaging with my CPC800 SCT on short exposures, with poor results, and also with a 102mm f5 Startravel, which gives a wider field and delivers images with live stacking which are pleasing to me, at least.

If the original poster has settled on a particular telescope, we can suggest a GoTo mount for it.

A 127mm Mak would also be worth having. I don't intend to dispose of mine. They have a long focal length, so good for planetary observation and double stars, not for widefield (a complement to the Startravel).

https://www.nipon-scope.com/lens-caps I bought from them to replace a missing cap on my 10x50 binoculars. They supply various sizes up to 123mm.

You'd need to tell us what scopes are offered with those mounts. I have the Startravel 102. It's quite well made for a budget scope, and the parts are metal rather than plastic. I found it useful as a widefield scope, but mainly use it for EEVA imaging (q.v.). If you want a scope for planetary viewing or for splitting double stars, buy something else.

With good reason. A home-assembled filter I thought was good came loose through the piston/air effect of fitting it on the end of the telescope tube, making a small gap at one edge which admitted unfiltered light. Fortunately I spotted something was wrong.