Cosmic Geoff

See the beginners telescope section on forum sponsors FLO website. That shows what beginner scopes they could sell you (if they had stock). Also check out the Celestron 127mm Mak SLT - mine still gets regular use.

That is significant, as to focus on objects that close you would need to move the camera further out than for infinity focus. A Barlow lens may enable you to get a proper focus at infinity, but your field of view will already be on the small side.

What do you mean by a 230v-12v converter, exactly? To power your kit from the mains, you will need a unit that converts mains power to regulated +12v DC. There are hundreds of such things, ranging from power bricks to large bench supplies with screw terminal outputs. If you can use mains power, that is likely to be the cheapest and most reliable method. For powering a visual mount (and no dew heaters) I use a battery pack. It's quicker and safer than running an extension cable and the charge lasts for several sessions. So your 17AH power tank went flat after about 4 hours? Without knowing the total load, I could not possibly comment on whether this is bad or normal. What was powering the laptop? Laptops are a power hog.

That would be good if you need a heavy mount for something else but overkill for a Mak that weighs about 4Kg. Most of the wobble in a SLT mount is down to the tripod so upgrading that rather than the whole GoTo mount is a sensible upgrade.

The Sky-watcher 3.8" tripod (listed by FLO) will not do what you asked for in your original post, but it looks like it might be easy to make an adaptor plate for a SLT mount head if you have metalworking tools.

That is a problem with many mounts that use the same connector style. (e.g. SE series). I have cable ties stuck on next to the sockets to restrain the cable. In the case of the CPC800, it helps if you pass the cable through the loop of the adjacent carry handle. You can also splay the centre pin with a sharp craft knife.

No such tripod exists. You will have to make an adaptor. If you search around you may be able to find a suitable design. I bought a spare 'bowl head' from astroboot and made wooden legs for it. (It was rather laborious.)

We had a couple of Meade achromats with GoTo mount at our local astro society. They were not well regarded, and Meade do not have a good reputation for customer support. The Powerseeker - see the comments above. The 152-750 looks like a reasonable scope but the mount might prove to be on the wobbly side. Also the mount is descibed as alt-az but looks like an equatorial in the picture, which does not give one much confidence in the seller. Where are you? The last link was for Egypt. If that's where you live, you may have limited choice in what you can order, particularly with the Covid-19 epidemic causing supply problems. As noted above, depending on what you want to look at and your capabilities with tech, you might find the equatorial mount more of a nuisance than a help. Note that some reputable astro dealers like FLO can ship internationally.

I have a CPC800 and had trouble with the azimuth bearing, which caused problems with tracking and a notable resistance when spinning the mount with the clutch released. I followed the procedure you mention but fortunately found that all I needed to do was slacken off a large adjustment nut. I have not read much positive about these mounts mounted on a wedge, and my own experience is that a C8 is not the best tool for deep space astrophotography. All the deep space images I took with a C8 looked awful, giving me no incentive to persist, while those I took with a 102mm f5 refractor were often pleasing.

I'd just add that should you manage to rebuild the focuser and eyepiece attachment, you should also acquire a 2" to 1.25" adapter, which would allow you to use 1.25" eyepieces, which for the shorter focal lengths (e.g. 15mm) are cheaper and more practical than 2" barrel eyepieces. I would agree that if too many item-specific and hard to source parts are missing it could be better to just buy another scope outfit. As a rough guide, a complete focuser assembly could cost £100, and eyepieces £30 to 50 each, and a replacement GoTo mount and tripod for a refractor that size, £550. Also as a guide, a similar outfit, a Sky-watcher 120mm Evostar on a EQ-5 Synscsn Goto mount, costs about £839, so if you can fix yours it is worth having, or re-selling if you can't fix it.

Observing faint and extended deep sky objects like galaxies from a light polluted area does not work well. You ideally need to be at a dark skies site. What is the Bortle value where you live? You will see more galaxies with your existing scope at a dark skies site than you would see with a 12" from a town.

Typically, the camera needs to be further in toward the objective lens than an eyepiece would be. The position needs to be exact, otherwise the image is so out of focus that nothing can be seen. This can mean that focus cannot be achieved, particularly in the case of a typical Newtonian reflector, or a refractor with limited focuser travel. As for your trouble with the drivers, this is not impressive. Maybe you should just ask for your money back. I had no trouble at all getting two ASI cameras and a Celestron camera to work with Sharpcap, or getting the Celestron camera to work with the software supplied.

I assume this is a GoTo mount... You do not need to do any of that for visual observing. Just get the mount polar aligned as best you can (mechanically) and then do a star align (electronic) and you should find that you can GoTo objects and track them just fine. You don't need any apps either - just use the mount's handset. Even the alt-azimuth Celestron GoTo mounts find and track just fine and they are not polar aligned at all... A closer polar align may be needed for astrophotography, but you can worry about that later. As for the Grand Conjunction, it looked good on the 19th and 20th, so don't despair of seeing something...

You could get an ASI120MC-S for £150. I should point out that the field of view you get will be similar to that of a 5mm eyepiece - maybe not what you were expecting. If you own a DSLR with a large operating screen and LiveView you could try attaching that.

You need an actual field of view of about half a degree, so whatever gives you that will work. I used an ASI224MC on a 102mm f5 achro yesterday.

On a Celestron Nexstar SLT mount, if the motor control firmware is corrupted you just reload it with the appropriate utility. This assumes of course that everything else is in working order.

If you are electro-phobic and do not want to pay for a LiFePo power tank, a car engine starter would be best buy. You can get splitters to power items other than the mount. A laptop would be a power hog, but I rely on the internal battery of mine, even though the endurance is very short. I don't use dew heaters, as I have only rarely experienced the need with a dew shield in place. Dew intensity may vary from one part of the country to another.

The dome head screws at the rear (and front) of the scope are for attaching accessories. If the holes are not blind, and you need longer screws, take care that the screws do not project inside, in case they snag something. On the subject of attaching things, ADM astro accessories make a series of neat looking bars, guide scope rings and suchlike for attaching things to SCTs. IIRC there are 'mini dovetails' you can bolt to the OTA via radius blocks and which accept various attaching devices. You should not need much instruction for setting up your scope for visual use. Just read the manuals.🙂

Which piece of hardware have you not swapped out? In a Celestron Nexstar SLT mount, there is a common error code meaning 'drive not responding' which is usually caused by the motor drive firmware in the mount becoming corrupted. You have downgraded the controller firmware but now cannot communicate with it? As a general comment, not necessarily aimed at you, a lot of people assume that they have to perform firmware upgrades, or treat it as the first resort if anything does not work as expected. They may be led astray by the perpetual security upgrades of Windows, Android, etc. But look it another way: when did you last upgrade the firmware in your car? or your washing machine, or your electric toothbrush, or a VCR, or your burglar alarm? The sensible course is to read the small print of what the upgrade is supposed to fix, and if it does not fix an actual problem that you are experiencing, and the kit works, then leave well alone.

I assume you tried downgrading the software back to the configuration that worked and that did not fix it?

In fairness to Celestron I should mention that the C6SE was presumably designed to be used with its handset rather than wifi. And that most speciaised software, including astro, is written for MS Windows only. I have been wary of WiFi since I worked in a lab where it was installed for our laptops, and then they had to rip it out because the stuff in the lab interfered with the wifi and jammed it. And now my home wifi has slowed for some reason and it takes hours to transfer planetary imaging results from my laptop. I'm looking for a spare network cable. 😕

Your telescope is f10 and so will work fine with Plossl eyepieces, which are relatively inexpensive. But buy a recognised brand and not just the cheapest. Also, as others have said check the barrel size before buying anything. You can buy adaptors for 0.965" to 1.25" but that is only good for higher powered eyepieces (shorter focal length, smaller lens elements). If you do have a 0.965" barrel focuser you will find it difficult now to buy eyepieces in that size that are any good, other than old ones.

The 4 SE is a Maksutov and has an aperture of 102mm. Unusually, instead of having a separate diagonal it has a flip mirror for camera or eyepiece built into the back end. The 127mm Mak obviously has a larger aperture. The 4 SE and 5 SE have the same mount which can be tilted up to work in a wedge or equatorial mode (not a very useful feature IMHO). My impression having seen them in a showroom was that the SE models had somewhat sturdier mounts than the SLT or the near-identical Skywatcher equivalent, but don't quote me.

See here: https://www.firstlightoptics.com/beginner-telescopes.html or get my first serious and GoTo outfit, the 127mm Celestron Nexstar Mak SLT. The Nexstar system is IMHO easier to operate than the Sky-watcher Synscan. If you get a handset GoTo rather than a WiFi Goto, that's one less thing to set up and one less thing to go wrong. The 4SE has not been discontinued as far as I know, but there may be supply problems. The 4SE probably has a more stable mount than some of the other entry level GoTos. I don't know anything about the Starsense smartphone system, but the original Starsense is affected by twilight or poor quality sky conditions; something to bear in mind.

Here is a pretty view of M82, taken on 12 Dec with 102mm f5 achromat, ASI224MC camera, SLT mount. Live stacked, 16 frames, total 138 secs.