Cosmic Geoff

Nowadays we use CMOS cameras, not CCD. What do you want to image and what is the budget? This will determine what cameras we suggest.

A power supply problem? Try fitting a proper +12v regulated power supply or power pack. If you are using 2 year old internal AA batteries I'm not surprised it doesn't work.

Serious astrophotography will need a more accurate polar alignment, together with tracking and autoguiding. But try with your kit and see what you can achieve.

The tripod used with the C8 SE has a similar top - I have both and I did compare them a while ago. Same spacing for the 3x holding screws but the center pins are not identical. To be frank though I think this is a bad idea - the C9.25 Evolution will really need the heavy duty tripod. If you put it on a lighter tripod I expect it will be waving in the breeze. If you have suitable access, putting the whole assembly on wheels might be a better option.

There will be some resistance to turning the gear. The gap between the worm and wormwheel should be adjusted to minimise backlash without making it too tight, lest the worm rotation bind. There is no way the bearings will have worn enough to need replacing. The plain bearings in my old car engine lasted for billions of revolutions.

You do not say what kind of motors (if any) are currently fitted to your EQ-3. If it's motorised, there should be a speed adjustment or a choice of sidereal/lunar/solar rates. How good is your polar alignment? You still have slight trailing at 1 second exposure. Maybe it's not tracking at all? I have regularly made exposures of 20 seconds (tracked but unguided) without noticeable trailing.

I have this scope (the C8 SE). There should be lots of reviews online if you look. A fine scope for visual use, and easy to move around as a unit. With the SE mount, not much good for imaging, except maybe planetary imaging.

The message basically means that the mount is not responding. That could be for various reasons. A similar message from a Celestron Nexstar typically means that the mount firmware needs a refresh, or water has got into the mount electronics. Solution: reload the firmware, or open the mount and dry it out.

Since the latest upgrade, it does spend a couple of minutes doing something called horizon adjustment (whatever the heck that is) unless it is turned off in the settings.

A 150p should easily show something of Saturn's rings, even with the kit eyepieces. You will have to be quick before it disappears into the twilight. Viewing the Great Red Spot will require a good quality eyepiece of suitable focal length, plus keen eyesight.

If you received Barlow lens with the Startravel, try using that + an eyepiece for planetary viewing. With my Startravel 102, this appeared to decrease the chromatic aberration on planetary viewing. If it doesn't work for you, nothing lost. My Startravel 102 works well as an imaging scope for EVAA (you may need a more serious mount). One can anticipate that a dual-band filter for imaging nebulae will also cut much of the chromatic aberration.

You should figure out how fast it is moving. If it doesn't trail on a stacked image you will need to image it twice a suitable time apart. There will be a lot of stars in the image at around mag. 19 and you have to figure out which dot is 3922.

If I were you, I would resist the temptation to do any of this. In the photos the mirrors and corrector plate look okay, so my recommendation is to leave well alone. The suggestion of cutting holes in the tube makes me shudder. Unless it is very old, it should not need any re-greasing. I have a C8 which I bought used and which must be over ten years old by now and it works fine. No dismantling, no extra holes, no servicing.

Re the 10/20/30 second exposures on the Seestar S50: My experience of doing EVAA with a 102mm refractor is that the longer the sub exposure time , the brighter the image, and live-stacking more subs mainly reduces the noise. With the Seestar, my initial impression on trying 10 and 20 second exposures on the same object was that the 20 sec version was brighter. My provisional conclusion is that a lot of objects would benefit from using the longer exposure. If one examines the raw 10 sec. subs, a lot of them require extreme stretching to make anything at all visible.

C8 SE: The altitude control was not very good, with a tendency to overshoot. Acceptable for visual use, but it wasn't capable of doing more than keeping a planet on the cropped sensor with some use of the handset when taking a short video, while watching the laptop display. As I noted above, a pain. The CPC800 and EQ-5 Synscan perform far better. With a f10 telescope, f6.3 reducer and a smaller sensor, the small-ish field of view that results mostly limits you to doing EAA of smaller objects like planetary nebulae or globular clusters, and you also need a decent mount that will track well for exposures of 20 secs or so.

I have a C8 SE, so can advise you that while it is good for visual use, it is not so good for imaging. You can do planetary imaging with it, as I did using a planetary camera (ASI 120 MC and then ASI224MC), and a used business laptop running Sharpcap on Windows, but the mount made it a bit of a pain and I later bought another scope with a more substantial mount, to use for planetary imaging. (Note there is no need to use an Asiair or other fancy stuff). As for EAA or deep space imaging, the deficiencies of the mount convinced me that it wasn't even worth trying. If you want to do either, I recommend that you buy some other kit more suited to the purpose. I have a 102mm f5 refractor and a EQ-5 Synscan mount that I use for EAA and some basic deep space imaging, along with a laptop and Sharpcap. NINA and similar software suites are only advantageous for serious deep-space imaging.

This outfit would be a reasonable starter for visual use, but its utility for imaging is limited. The SLT tripod is on the wobbly side and the mount is alt-azimuth.

I couldn't see a difference between 10 sec and 20 sec exposure stacks of the same object & field, except that the 20 sec stack was brighter.

It now has the option of 20sec and 30 sec exposures in the advanced settings.

Unless you buy a Seestar, serious imaging will require a four-figure bill for equipment and a steep learning curve for image processing and installing various bits of kit. I suggest you buy Steve Richard's book "Making Every Photon Count" before buying anything related to imaging (other than the Seestar). AFAIR your Astromaster does not have a good reputation, so best get a refund and see what FLO has to offer.

I have the ZWO ASI120MC, the ASI224MC and the ASI462MC. They all work, but the ASI462MC is the best of the three. Note that the ASI462MC is now discontinued. ZWO frequently introduce newer and more capable cameras. Note that you may also need an IR-cut filter, depending on which camera you buy.

Sharpcap includes polar alignment.

With the recent software versions you get three versions of the stack : a processed image on your smartphone, a composite fits file on the S50, and (if you select the option) a set of fits files, one for each exposure. The practical effect of this re your query is as follows: I imaged NGC2024 and found that the Iphone image had a pair of white lines across it - presumably an airplane track. On investigation I found that the white lines appeared on only ONE sub out of about 200, and after deleting that one I processed the files with Deep Sky Stacker and Siril, to get a slightly enhanced image with no white lines.

You don't need an auto focuser. I don't use one. Resist the temptation to buy unneccesary stuff which you will try once and then leave in the box. Get some experience using the scope.

You need to focus Jupiter via the laptop screen - you can use software aids or just focus on the cloud bands (I do the latter). It may not look sharp but just focus for maximum sharpness. Alternatively temporarily brighten the image and focus on a moon. Your flip mirror assembly should have a separate focus adjustment for the eyepiece. However it does not matter if the eyepiece view is out of focus as you are only using it to line up the scope with the planet. In short, the eyepiece and the camera are NOT parfocal.