Cosmic Geoff

24 minutes ago, MrG1977 said:

It will mostly be in my back garden so power wouldn't be a problem , I have also looked at the skywatcher quattro 12s but have read that they maybe a little big for an eq mount and would wobble even in the slightest breeze , I'm thinking perhaps might be better getting a big DOB for the time being as we enjoy the visual more at the moment and then look to add an eq mount and a refractor at a later date when I've learnt more about the photography side 

This will leave you with nothing suitable for planetary imaging, for which a SCT would be best buy.  If you have deep pockets you could get a SCT on an alt-azimuth GoTo mount for planetary imaging and visual, and a EQ-6 and small refractor for deep sky imaging.  What pattern of use do you anticipate?  An alt-azimith GoTo mount is generally less work to set up than a German equatorial GoTo like the Eq-6.  With my C8 SE + Starsense I have little more to do than carry the whole thing outside and turn it on.

6 hours ago, Jasonb said:

I assume it's ok to leave the scope attached to the mount/tripod the whole time?

Not when you are carrying it.  Otherwise OK.

You can use a variety of things to power a mount (see above replies.)

I used a 7 AH sealed lead-acid battery + home-made leads for several years until it seemed to be needing a charge more often.  Now I use a Celestron LiFePo 84.48Wh power tank (which also works as a low-voltage inspection light - very handy).

I also have an engine starter/light/air compressor unit which I acquired used along with a telescope.  It was fine till the mount stared acting up and I found the battery had partly failed.  I wanted to repair it, so had to buy a matching battery (12v 22AH, sealed lead-acid) for £47 (ouch).  It has a trickle charger accessory to keep it charged between uses.

I think that regardless of what engine starter or astro 'power tank' you buy, it will have a standard type of sealed lead-acid battery in it.  There seems no reason not to buy an engine starter device, especially if you actually can use it for its intended purpose (that compressor is very useful for inflating tyres).

I agree that the cigarette lighter plugs are a bit rubbish. I broke one by tripping over the power lead in the dark.

I also made up a 10x1.2v AA Nicad battery set which worked with my SLT mount and was small and light, but keeping 10 cells charged was a faff.

All the above devices would work for several sessions without needing a recharge (with my mounts).

The small setting circles on modern mounts are just for show. The accuracy of setting attainable often represents an error angle wider than the field of view in the eyepiece. In the days before GoTo, setting circles were much bigger. I have seen some in Victorian observatories that were about 2 feet across.  I tried using the setting circles on my EQ-5 to aim a 203mm Newtonian but it was rather a waste of time.

To make setting circles work, you probably have to polar align the mount with the precision needed for astro-imaging, rather than the 'point it near Polaris' that suffices for visual observing.

3 minutes ago, George Sinanis said:

Thanks @Cosmic Geoff if i go for the Bresser 6" what would be the minimum eyepieces i should get with it (if any)?

Everyone will have an opinion, but in addition to the 25mm Plossl that comes with it you should get at least two half-decent eyepieces to give a range of higher magnifications with the most powerful being about 5mm.

If you definitely want a Dob, the Bresser 6" planetary might be a better buy than the smaller Zhumell.  And if you later decide that the Dob format was a mistake, you should be able to easily mount the Bresser on a different mount, since it has tube rings.

The GoTo is extremely useful for finding faint, non-obvious objects, but is not necessary if your interest is confined to the Moon and brighter planets, which are a no-brainer to find.  For the latter, an equatorial mount with RA drive, or even an alt-azimuth mount, will be sufficient, and release a little more money to spend on optics. 

Be aware that the lower priced outfits tend to under-mount the telescope with a flimsy tripod. If you ever get to use a good quality mount, you will find that it feels like scaffolding compared with the wobble-mounts supplied with many of these kits.  Unfortunately it would be very easy to spend your whole budget on  a good quality solid GoTo mount for a small telescope.

Do not be put off by the small field of view of a Maksutov telescope.  Most astronomical objects are very small, the exceptions being star clusters, and some nebulae, the latter being mostly invisible except in long exposure photographs.

Yes, it does look non-standard. 

How good are you at metalwork? With a bit of drilling and/or filing or thread tapping, it should be possible to either fit a standard dovetail in place of the I-shaped piece or bolted to it.  It would be better to have a dovetail at the balance point of the tube which with the 127mm Mak is about halfway along the tube.

Or you might be able to find a pair of small tube rings to fit and bolt a standard dovetail to them.

Anything is possible, but we need to know details of the dovetail or whatever on the Konus tube to advise you further.  My (larger) Maksutov has a standard dovetail bolted directly to the tube and it is not obvious whether it can be removed without dropping nuts inside. 

I have a C8 on the CPC800 Celestron twin-fork mount. It's great for visual and for planetary imaging, but for imaging nebulae, I'm not even going to try. I'd need a completely different setup. 

36 minutes ago, akarmicanomaly said:

Sky-Watcher Explorer 200P EQ5

I used to have an identical combination and I hated it.  With the tripod legs retracted, it would not see low objects over the garden fence. With the tripod legs extended when aiming at the zenith the eyepiece was about 7ft off the ground. The eyepiece could get into some awkward positions.  The straight-thru finder was hard to use and a red dot finder was not more helpful - it really needed a coarse finder or gunsight and a right-angle finder.  I wanted to try it on M81 and M82 - easy galaxies, but never managed to get it aimed at them.  Within months I bought a used 8 inch Goto SCT which ticked all my boxes.

Most of us upgrade by buying further telescopes or mounts.  If however you want an upgrade path from manual > motorised > GoTo, you should buy an Eq3-2 or Eq-5 mount.  A 200mm f6 Newtonian really needs, in terms of equatorial mounts, a HEQ6, which is somewhat expensive. The upgrade path from manual Dob to GoTo Dob is to dispose of it and buy the GoTo version.

I am not familiar with the equatorial platform, but the question has to be asked: if it's such a great idea, why does everybody not use one or why is it not a standard upgrade?

£350 is probably not enough for a GoTo outfit unless you buy second-hand.  £350 for a GoTo is barely entry level. 

I would however recommend GoTo as I have tried both Goto and manual and found that manual was a waste of time except for obvious  brighter objects, or the grab'n go role with a smaller sized scope.  The GoTo has a further advantage in a light polluted area where fewer stars are visible to the naked eye. I have been interested in finding things, not "learning the night sky".

If you prefer a more basic instrument, you could get a nice new Dobsonian for £350, assuming you can find stock.

Maybe get a smaller table-top Dob with a view to upgrading when you have had some experience.

A one-star or one-planet align is not good enough to find objects far from the original aligning point, unless you level the mount with great accuracy.  The one-object align assumes that the mount is perfectly level. Accuracy will be much better with a two-star align.

Replace the mirror diagonal if you like, but I have not found that replacing diagonals made much of an observable difference.  The extra cost tends to get you better build quality rather than a flatter mirror.

Even a 8mm eyepiece will not give you a lot of planetary magnification in that scope.  (x83) You need a lot more magnification than that to see much.

I found that using a x2 Barlow (the one supplied with it) significantly improved the image quality of my 102mm f5 Startravel achromat, asides from the increase in magnification, when looking at planets.   So I suggest your next purchase should be a x2 Barlow lens.

I'm surprised you cannot source a circlip - there seems no reason for Meade to use a non-standard size.

re the power, I would be surprised if the mount does not have a socket for plugging in an external +12v power supply.  If it really has not, you could dispense with the battery holder and wire in an external connection yourself.  Nearly everyone uses an external power source instead of internal non-rechargable cells anyway.

As for the mount, if there is no standard dovetail allowing you to fit the scope to any mount, you could either re-work the tube clamp so you can bolt a dovetail to it, or invest in a pair of tube rings and dovetail bar.

I would suggest though that fitting the 'scope to a new GoTo mount would be more expensive than the project is worth. Maybe a used manual mount?

You can look up what the message means on the nexstarsite.com.

I think you will find that it means something like 'No response from mount' aka 'something not working' 🙂.

I had this and so far as I can remember the cure was to reload the mount firmware (not the handset firmware).   You can do this but it is rather a faff and you need the right connecting cable and maybe a USB-to-serial unit if you have an older mount.

I suggest you find and read the "What can I expect to see?" thread here.

I suggest you start with visual only in mind. When you have some experience, you can re-purchase for imaging projects - the latter is likely to prove expensive.

What kind of telescope? Really this is up to you; with a budget of £400 to £500 your first decision should be whether you want an entry level outfit with GoTo, or a somewhat larger telescope without GoTo.

Next choice: what sort of mount? The German equatorial is versatile, but needs polar alignment, and is only really useful or essential these days when equipped with a RA motor to make it track, or for long exposure astrophotography.  Alt-azimuth mounts are easier to understand, and in GoTo form work just fine and will track and do almost anything else you want.   The Dobsonian (a mount, not a telescope, but for Newtonian reflectors only) is popular because of its simplicity and low added cost, offering maximal aperture per £.

Then there's the telescope itself (the OTA): again plenty of choice here, and again it's partly a matter of what appeals to you.  In your budget you will be looking at Newtonians - a simple classic design, but need periodic collimation which will worry some beginners,  achromatic refractors: the short tube f5 versions are only fit for widefield viewing (or entry level inaging), while the long tube (f10) ones are good for looking at planets etc.  The Maksutov is a reliable design with long focal ratio that rarely if ever requires collimation - buy with confidence.    The smallest SCT at 5" aperture is another reliable design that has a long focal ratio (typically f10) and may or may not be within your budget.

If all this just leaves you confused, then get a table-top mini-Dobsonian telescope (e.g. the Heritage 130p) and try that till you are able to decide what to buy next.

On 14/11/2020 at 11:22, Joe beaumont said:

Thank you so much, where did you buy this scopes from or what websites 

Have a look on the for sale section here, or on astrobuysell UK website.

Reasonable if it's like new and has all the accessories. But if you are not sure walk away. I got my C8 SE for half the discounted new price. It is a bit marked and used looking but works like new.  And I got a more expensive SCT outfit that looks new for half the price of a new one.

57 minutes ago, FCN62 said:

Aware that the Nexstar you have is over double the budget of the 4SE and double the aperture! but how is it for DSO's? Do you think the 4SE would provide a good view? I'm beginning to think the 4" is far too small and we're not going to be getting enough scope for the budget. 

From a dark skies site, the C8 SE was great for looking at DSOs - I could find them quickly with the GoTo and found lots.  I also took my 102mm refractor + GoTo mount to a dark skies site and saw some DSOs with it.  But if seeing galaxies is a priority you need aperture.

BTW, SCTs are often available used at greatly reduced prices, possibly because people buy them with deepsky imaging in mind and then find they've been misled by inflated claims.

6 minutes ago, FCN62 said:

For us personally, the GoTo capability would be incredibly useful, and as Happy Kat stated, to have the ability to utilise both GoTo and manual capability would be great. I don't think I would ever go solely manual however, at least not at this stage. 

I have never seen the point of having a manual capability.  A star alignment does not take long compared with the faff of erecting the telescope and carrying out the accessories.  To find Mars manually I would have to slew the telescope and fiddle about peering in the finder.  Why bother when I can just press 'Mars' and wait a bit?  At most, with 'Freedom Find' I would not have to wait for it to slew.

BTW, I have both Celestron Nexstar alt-azimuth GoTos and Skywatcher Synscan equatorial GoTo and I find the Nexstar easier to use and quicker to set up.

Be aware that there are sharply different opinions here on the merit of 'GoTo'.  Personally, I would not be without it for my principal telescopes.

The telescopes you cite are all fine, and in a dark skies area should keep you occupied for years. 

The mounts though, may be a different matter, and may well prove to under-mount these scopes. Also give a thought as to whether you want wifi control via a phone or tablet, or via the potentially less troublesome cabled handset.  A really rigid GoTo mount for any of these scopes could consume your entire £500 budget.  Some of those tripods seem the same as the tripod of my 127mm Mak, a tripod I rarely use now because I consider it too wobbly.

Astronomy is not a cheap hobby, and £150 does not go very far.   With that budget, you need to shop carefully to avoid getting a poor quality telescope on a poor quality (wobbly or difficult to use) mount.   With the often-recommended Heritage 130p, the optics are said to be good, there is not much to go wrong, and if you don't like the mini-Dob tabletop mount, you can transfer the telescope onto a better (and more expensive) mount of your choice at a later date.

I suggest you avoid equatorial mounts on the grounds that beginners often find them confusing, and other than the fact that they can be motorised (at extra cost) they confer few if any practical advantages to the beginner.

You need to take some basic decisions.  You can hang a camera on almost any scope and take 'astro snaps' but if you are serious about astrophotography you need to give some serious thought to getting the right kit (which will not be cheap). Requirements differ depending on whether you go for wide field imaging, planetary imaging, or deep space imaging.

Is having the maximum aperture for your money a priority? In that case get the large manual Dob.

Do you think you will want GoTo so you can find faint non-obvious objects with the minimum of hassle?  If so, unless you have deep pockets you may have to compromise on aperture.

If you have GoTo, consider that if you are using it for visual only, a German equatorial is a liability, and an alt-azimuth GoTo will be quicker and easier to set up each time you take it out (no polar alignment).

Consider the possibility of ending up with two setups - one for visual and one for imaging.

I once had a 200p Newtonian on a manual equatorial mount, with a straight-thru finder. I found it a thoroughly unpleasant beast to use - the eyepiece was sometimes out of reach, the finder gave me a neck ache at high elevations (it really needed two finders - coarse and fine), and I struggled to find any faint objects with it.  As soon as I could, I took it out of use and got a second-hand 8" GoTo SCT outfit.