Cosmic Geoff

Some suggestions: Concentrate on observing stuff that punches through the murk, eg the Sun, the Moon, the planets, and double stars.

To observe the planets you will need a good view (low horizon) to the south. 

It seems that deep space astrophotography will be a tough ask from your location.

Or you can subscribe to services that give you time on a remote telescope.

Depends what exactly you want to do with it.  The C9.25 and C11 would be great for visual observations regardless of what mount you get.  For planetary imaging you should get a better mount - for the C9.25 that would be at minimum the Evolution mount and the heavy duty tripod.  Or the CPC925 veriant - but be warned that this is very heavy.

The C11 could be used vith various mounts including the CPC1100 setup, which would be good for planetary imaging, but the CPC1100 ota/fork assy is alarmingly heavy. 

You could put either scope on an EQ6 mount, but what for?  A SCT is not suited for beginner's deep space astrophotography.  If you are not going to attempt deep space astrophotography, you can do everything with an alt-az Goto mount which will be much easier to manage. It is rumoured that the reason SCTs are relatively cheap secondhand is that people buy them for astrophotography and after trying it they sell the scope on.

You could get the Edge HD version, but note that the extra correction optics are mainly intended for imaging, and won't do much on a planet in the centre of the field.  On the other hand, some claim that these models perform better visually, and it is rumoured that the Edge HD models are hand-finished in the USA rather than machine finished in China. That may be an Internet rumour though.

The Starsence is a handy time-saving accessory that can be bought separately, but note that I have found that having GPS built into the mount leaves little incentive to fit a Starsense, as the setup work is reduced to aligning on a couple of stars, which is quick and easy with a Nexstar alt-az mount.

I mostly prefer to use handsets rather than the extra complication of cabled computers or wifi tablets.

I think for planetary imaging you could ignore the balancing so long as the outfit is roughly in balance.  My experience is with alt-azimuth GoTo mounts which are not balanced in the first place. I star align with an eyepiece and then fit the imaging accessories.  It would be nearly impossible to do a star alignment using the planetary camera - the field of view is far too small.

Great choice of telescope. The C8 is not demanding of eyepieces: with mine I use the 25mm that came with it, a 15mm Plossl and a 8-24 zoom or an 8mm eyepiece. Don't buy an eyepiece/filter set.

I am not sure what the problem here is. The tripod should not deflect visibly when loaded with the scope and counterweight.  Also, for visual use, any slight change in the levelling will not be critical.  How are you measuring the levelling? With a bubble built into the mount head?  That is not an accurate device, but sufficient for visual setup.

In fact, this mount and tripod, being part of an entry level kit, will be on the wobbly side, and if you feel it is inadequate the only solution is to buy a more substantial mount and tripod.

Which mount did you get with the Celestron Nexstar 8 (and is this the C8 SCT?) The popular entry level SE mount is not suited for astrophotography, wedge or no wedge - there is too much wobble and backlash.  A lot of people buy a SCT and wedge with the intention of doing astrophotography, find out the hard way that this was a bad idea and either sell up the whole outfit or buy a german equatorial mount.  Indeed I have seen it written that this is the reason that SCTs are often surprisingly cheap second hand....

One issue quoted is that polar alignment is such a pain that you would only willingly want to do it once and leave the outfit permanently set up.

You could use the scope as-is with its star diagonal for terrestrial targets if you don't mind the left-right reversal.  Otherwise look for a suitable erecting prism diagonal - maybe ask retailers to avoid being caught out by vague descriptions.

Remote viewing from indoors is not as easy as you imagine.  I have the Starsense, and while it is a time saver it is not (in my experience) any more accurate than a two-star align so it is not guaranteed to drop objects into the eyepiece FOV.  Then you need a camera. Unless you spend a great deal of money the chip size will be small, giving a FOV similar to a 6mm eyepiece, making it  difficult to get an object centred on the chip even if you stand by the telescope, let alone remotely.  A DSLR will have a much larger chip but may introduce other problems.

Then you have to focus. If you have to adjust this remotely, this means an electric focuser.

I suggest your first step should be to attach a camera to the scope and see just how difficult it is to get an image on a screen, before you think of trying it remotely.

If you want to attach a DSLR you need the PDS variant, otherwise you may find you can't get focus with the camera.  Some imagers  use the 150 PDS with an EQ-6 GoTo mount, which seems to show how far the mounts you are looking at are off the mark.

With your budget you could get a tracking mount on which to mount the camera directly for widefield imaging,  or a telescope on a light mount suited for visual only, which you could try experimenting with for imaging or EVAA.  I found I could do interesting EVAA with a 102mm f5 refractor, SLT alt-azimuth GoTo mount, and ASI224MC camera but the camera alone would use up most of your budget.  And I used a more rigid home-made wood tripod. 

7 hours ago, JokubasJar said:

Could I alternatively get the 150/750 eq3-2 variant and use it with a 2x barlow? It weighs less which would help with mount wobble. Would it produce worse or similar results? I plan on using a ZWO ASI 120MC-S with this rig.

7 hours ago, JokubasJar said:

My apartment is also quite high in the city I live in and I normally bring my telescope out on a balcony, would it help if I would make some sort of wind shield to block the wind from shaking the scope?

You mean change the whole outfit?  That opens up a wider set of possibilities (depending on your budget).  The 150/750 would be less of a 'wind sail' as well as being lighter. You would definitely need a barlow lens with it for planetary imaging. And it might require more exotic eyepieces for general observing.  If working in a windy environment you should think of using a heavier mount, e.g. EQ-5.  A wind shield would only be partially effective and could itself be a hazard in the event of really high winds.

I can't advise you about the vertigo. But I can advise you about mounts.  I agree about the EQ-2 being too wobbly.   An EQ3-2 would be a lot more stable, and is available as a manual mount or a GoTo, and you can get non-GoTo RA drive or RA & Dec two-axis drive kits for it.

A slight caution about the EQ3-2 GoTo: GoTo can be great, but equatorial mounts can be a headache for novices, and  ditto getting to grips with GoTo systems, and if you combine the two together...

Alt-azimuth GoTo mounts are much less trying, but you would have to look at lesser known makes like Ioptron, as the entry level alt-az GoTo mounts that might take your scope will not be a lot more stable then the EQ-2.

Ideally you should try to borrow a GoTo outfit or a better manual mount and see how you get on with it, before spending more money on something that may not fix your problem.

A small error in elevation would not cause your problems.  The Celestron Nexstar software does not have any elevation setting at all. There has been a lot of posting here about Skywatcher GoTo problems; I suggest a search.

Any Goto mount should do this. But if budget is a problem, you do not need Goto for this.  An equatorial with RA drive should suffice.

I have done planetary imaging with a C8.

Which mount? If you want to do the job properly, you should use your HEQ5.  If you want a seperate cheap mount, then it's up to you what you go for.  The requirements for planetary imaging are not severe, as it does not matter much should the mound shake a bit during the video run.  So an EQ3-2 will probably work (I assume you have checked the weicht of the C8 OTA against the rating of the EQ3-2 for visual use).  An EQ-5 would, one assumes, be better.

GoTo or RA drive?  Using a mount with RA drive will actually work once you get the planet in frame.  I briefly used an RA-drive EQ-5 with the C8 and it worked okay.  But a GoTo mount gives you a choice of slow motion speeds on each axis.

The SE mount commonly bundled with the C8 is not really up to the job - too much wobble and backlash.  The CPC800 variant on the other hand is a great planetary imaging setup - very solid mount and really smooth and almost backlash-free.

Filters have obvious uses for imaging, but I can't remember when I last used a filter for visual observing.

I don't know the story of your C8 SE but they come with a decent Celestron prism diagonal, #94115A.  I have not noted any odd reflections caused by this diagonal.  I bought a Circle T prism diagonal for my 127mm Mak and have not noticed any issues with that either.

2 hours ago, Cake said:

Yeah, I don't mind a barlow, but if I can avoid getting an ADC, that's awesome.

If your whole setup cost only £160 you probably will not be wanting to invest in an ADC (around £120).  Correcting in software does not work as well as using an ADC - there's a technical reason for this, I'm sure.

Planetary imaging is a field where giving it a go may be  more instructive than a lot of theory. I have no idea how well a smartphone would work - I only note that some smartphones have several cameras in them and cost more than a lot of folk's telescopes. 😀

If you look through the Planetary Imaging section of the forum you can see what hardware the more ambitious imagers actually use.

I also got some colour fringing on my Mars images with the planet at over 40 degrees altitude, but took it out with the colour align feature in Registax6. I am relieved to know that I am not the only imager to encounter this.  I originally assumed I would get a better overall result without the ADC.

Try it in practice, and you will find that the atmosphere is the main limiting factor, though the effect of 'seeing' will be less extreme with a 4" than with, say, an 8" telescope.  Jupiter and Saturn are currently low, so from the UK you will be trying to image through a lot of unstable atmosphere, which also causes some chromatic dispersion.  Often a Barlow, though theoretically advantageous in most cases, gives no improvement in practice. The use of an atmospheric dispersion corrector (ADC) is advised.

It is worth investing in a decent planetary camera rather than the cheapest, as the difference in performance can be significant.

I set up my CPC800, with ASI224MC camera in the early hours to get some Mars images. There was cloud about but mostly Mars was in the clear.  I did not use an ADC as Mars was at an altitude of 44 degrees, but the barlowed colour images stil needed a tweak of colour alignment in processing.

Larger images are with x2 Omni barlow lens. Monochrome image taken with infrared pass filter. 5000 frame videos, best 20% processed in Registax6, and Photoshop Elements.  Mars now has an apparent diameter of 19", getting closer to its opposition size.  The South Polar Cap seems to be getting smaller.

The surface features at 0430 AM BST match well with the Mars Mapper.

I had my C8 SE out for some visual observing but did not get much done (full moon). There was some action at Jupiter so I put the ASI224MC and the ADC on to take some images. 5000 frame videos, processed best 20% with Registax6.

The result was better than I expected with Jupiter at an altitude of 14 degrees.  The image shows the Great Red Spot, some nice cloud detail, the shadow of Io and there ought to be a transiting Io there somewhere.

1 hour ago, Pork_Nocker said:

However, looking at pictures of the say the Skywatcher EQ35, everything on that goto mount is electrical. I don't see any way of making manual adjustments without having to grab the controller. So I am looking for a goto mount that can be manually moved in both the horizontal and vertical position.

Trust me, using control buttons is no more of a hardship than reaching for a manual slow motion knob.  There are various GoTo mounts that incorporate extra encoders so that you can unclamp the axes and move the mount manually without losing the GoTo star alignment.  The feature is called 'Freedom Find' and suchlike IIRC.  Whether this feature is available on heavy duty mounts I couldn't say, but it seems to be increasingly offered on mounts intended for entry level and lighter duties.  It's a feature I have managed fine without, so far.

IIRC it might be possible to update the Vixen Super Polaris to GoTo by exploiting its similarity to the EQ-5.  The Synscan upgrade kit costs around £300.  If this appeals, search this forum for relevant and confirmatory posts.  For the same or slightly more money however you could buy a used EQ-5 Synscan.  I suggest you buy and read the book "Making Every Photon Count" (available from FLO) before you spend a lot of money on unsuitable kit.  I suspect that the Vixen is not particularly suited to astrophotography other than planetary imaging.

I'm sure the EQ-3 would not be adequate to mount a long 4" refractor.  Whether even an EQ-5 or equivalent would be adequate for your future plans depends on how seriously you want to get into astrophotography.

Unless you are constrained by cash or storage space, I would advise keeping the Vixen and its SP mount regardless.

I did not see much point in transferring my Starsense to my CPC800. Since the mount has GPS, all you have to do after erecting the scope is a 2-star align, which is quick and easy to do.  As for parking it between uses, read the small print, as AFAIK if you kill the power you will have to do the star alignment again.  

Re your headline - don't buy on the basis of what eyepieces and accessories are bundled with your telescope of choice.  With entry level telescopes they can be assumed to be cheapies of poor quality and intended to just get you going.  The 9/10mm eyepieces are particularly poor.  If they did bundle decent eyepieces with the kits, the kits would cost a lot more and you would be deterred from buying.

The three telescopes you cite are radically different, and I suggest you think more about what you want to do, and with what sort of telescope. You also should think about how you want to mount them, and why.

I have the Startravel 102mm - it's quite well made, but is a widefield telescope and not really suited to viewing at high magnification (e.g. not great on planets or the Moon). Under some conditions it shows noticeable chromatic aberration and field distortion.  I have used mine for EEVA imaging.  Mine came with a 45 deg. prism not suitable for astronomical use.

I also have the Celestron 127mm Mak - it's a good quality scope that I really like and intend to keep. Works well at high magnification (if you buy a good quality eyepiece)

The Orion will give you lots of aperture for your money, but what about the mount?  If it's a Dobsonian, that will be cheap and simple. But people would not spend ££££ on expensive GoTo mounts if a cheap and simple mount did everything.

It may not be the cause of the problem, but 1.5 amp output seems rather low for a telescope of that size, when one often sees 5 amp recommended for the larger mounts.