Cosmic Geoff

If you are having trouble aligning the C8 SE, a Starsense is not necessarily going to help. You need to find out why you are having trouble, and sort it. The Nexstar system on an Alt-Az mount is almost as simple as it gets. You should try aligning an equatorial Sywatcher Synscan... 😦 Basically, to align the C8 SE, get the tripod level - placing the bubble level supplied temporarily on the top plate (on my second hand kit it came attached to the lower mount with a bit of sticky but should be used on the top plate) Make sure the time, date, location are entered in the right format and match your location and time zone and daylight saving. Causes endless fun for unwary newbies. Then do a two star auto align (or one star align, or Solar System align - your choice.) Just Read The Manual. As for the Starsense, once set up, it works well and is a good complement to the C8 SE in a quick deploy carry out setup. I have found that with the Starsense attached it is not necessary to level the tripod providing you are using it on a hard surface e.g. patio or backyard concrete. The initial setup is not straightforward though, and the manual is about as easy to follow as BSc physics course. The manual contains at least one critical error: Starsense Manual - First Time Setup - Calibrate Centre, paragraph 2. ...in that region of sky. Press ALIGN. Centre the star. (coarse align) (fine align) as 3. below (handwritten addition) 3. Attach your widest angle/lowest power eyepiece... As for eyepieces, you really need to add to the 25mm that came with it. You will get 57 kinds of advice about this, but I suggest a 15mm Celestron Omni Plossl and a 8mm or 10mm of whatever eyepiece model takes your fancy. And maybe a cheap 8-24 mm zoom. And leave the Barlow in its box; you don't need it with a f10 SCT, except for planetary imaging. I can't comment on the "Bresser full HD deep-sky camera" as this seems to be a generic trade name. I hope all this helps.

+12 volts is one of the nominal output voltages from a PC PSU - the exact level when measured by a digital multimeter may well be somewhat higher or lower - real example from working PC: 11.96v (varying slightly). Sample output ratings: +5v = 30 amps, +12v = 15 amps.

Plossls should be good enough for a f11 telescope, particularly for the longer focal length eyepieces.

An image of Jupiter with a transit of Io, showing the moon and its shadow, plus another moon (Callisto). This was the best of a number of images. I used shorter runs of 3000 images while contending with thin moving cloud, then 5000 when the cloud moved away. But the seeing seemed to deteriorate, so this is the best image. I left the gear out in hopes of imaging Mars later but by 3am on the 18th, the sky had totally clouded over. Equipment: CPC800, ASI224MC, ADC, processed in Registax6. Best 20% of 3000 frames. The "Wavelet" section of Registax has six sliders. I have been in the habit of using just the top one, but adding some action with the second one definitely improved last night's set of images.

I would try using a desktop computer power supply. These are mains powered, switchmode, and have outputs of +5v, +12v and usually other voltages like -12v. The +5v and +12v outputs will deliver several amps, depending on the supply rating. The +5v is the regulated output so you should ensure this is sufficiently loaded. All 0 volt returns are connected. The only bit you will have to make yourself is the 7.4 volt regulator circuit, powered from +12v. And remember you will need to feed a signal into one of the connectors to make a computer PSU turn on.

You could blank out the chipped part of the objective with black tape etc. That should improve the contrast. I did this with a vintage Ross 40mm scope that arrived with a spall at the edge of the objective. The aluminium lens cell and glare shield parts would not undo - somebody already tried.

This would be a good outfit for having a go at planetary imaging - preferably with a dedicated planetary video camera and processing the results with stacking software. OTOH, for deep space astrophotography the scope and particularly the mount are not well suited for this, and beyond having a dabble to see what you can achieve, you should think of buying something else. The book "Making Every Photon Count" (available from forum sponsor FLO) is recommended as the standard reference. If you look in the imaging sections of this forum, you will see what kit is being used.

I have used a C8 for various things, ditto several Celestron Nexstar mounts. I suspect that your photometry isn't the most demanding application re the mount so I can't see why it should not work. I should point out though that the C11 is a big OTA and though not extremely heavy, mounting it by yourself might not be any fun. If you don't need an equatorial and field rotation is not an issue you could use an alt-azimuth mount. Not that there are many options. But there is a CPC1100 which if it is anything like the CPC800 will have a very stable and well behaved mount. But the OTA/mount assembly is very heavy and I would not like to try lifting one. If you are having a permanent observatory these weight & handling problems would be solved.

Ideally you want a dedicated planetary video camera. It seems you refer to an infrared filter. My ZWO camera, having some IR response, can be fitted with an IR-cut filter for normal use or an IR-pass filter for imaging in infrared. Video exposure times are about 10x longer in infrared. If your camera is unmodified (red filter not removed) ir may have no IR response at all.

There is a website where you can order rubber lens caps. I used it to order a replacement objective cap the right size for my binoculars.

Is it an astro scope (inverted view) or non-inverted view (terrestial)? My Ross is terrestrial, with an erecting set that clearly increases the effective focal length so that the magnification with a 20mm Plossl eyepiece is crazily high. Yours looks like an interesting purchase.

With a smaller ROI (region of interest), e.g. 320x240 pixels, the planet image is more closely cropped and the frame rate is higher, which means the imaging total time for a large number of video frames is less, which may improve the quality of the final result. A smaller ROI puts greater demands on your guiding, however. With a faster frame rate there is less time for the planet to drift out of frame if the tracking is less than perfect.

The ADC is very straightforward to install. Just fit it between diagonal and eyepiece and then do a major re-focus. If you noted any blue or red fringing, the ADC, correctly set, will get rid of it. Is sounds like turbulence was to blame for the "bad focus" - situation normal: blurry except for brief glimpses of a clearer view. At 20 deg this is to be expected. I suspect you will find it looks the same with the $350 eyepieces.

You can use anything so long as it delivers +12v with sufficient current capacity for long enough. I have a car starter with cigarette-lighter style outlet, a Celestron LiFePo power tank, and a 12v 7Ah sealed lead acid battery. They all do the job of powering a C8 SE. Anything that looks really small or really cheap may not have enough capacity for a long session.

The C8, (and presumably the C9.25) comes with a nice 1.25" prism diagonal. So far, I have seen no reason to change it for another diagonal which would most likely not give any visual improvement regardless of cost. Same for 2" components. I have a 32mm Plossl which I rarely bother to get out of the box. If I want widefield, I have other scopes.

Looks like a genuine old scope that has been fitted to a non-original mount. It is unlikely to take modern eyepieces, though that might not be an issue if you have the originals. It could be worth something in three figures if in fair condition and tidied up. Do you feel lucky? I have a vintage Ross brass refractor which turned out to work superbly when kitted to go on a modern astro mount, and with the original 32mm diameter eyepiece temporarily replaced with a 31.7mm (1.25") dia eyepiece + a slip of card packing. Totally blew away the 70/700 supermarket refractor I had a while ago.

I have one of the older ZWO ASI120MC. I used it with a Dell Vostro laptop running Windows 7 and it worked fine. I don't remember the frame rate but it wasn't slow.

I think that your inexpensive Newtonian at f5 focal ratio wil benefit much more from exotic eyepieces than the expensive C9.25 at f10. I found that the Celestron X-cel LX eyepieces, or even the humble Celestron Omni Plossls, worked well enough in a C8. As for the Barlow lens, you don't need one for a f10 telescope. A regular eyepiece of around 6mm or 10mm will give all the power you are likely to need. I second the suggestion of a binoviewer. Actually, I found planetary visual observation a bit disappointing and moved into planetary imaging to get the best view I could out of the optics. Depending on your latitude, which you have not disclosed, you may also find an ADC (atmospheric dispersion corrector) useful. An ADC is almost essential for viewing Jupiter and Saturn in the UK at present as they are very low in the sky.

Modern smartphones often have good cameras - they should, when the smartphone often costs more than the scopes some people hang them on. 🙂 However, smartphones are not designed for taking planet images through a telescope. Are you taking single still images? Successful planetary imaging depends on taking thousands of images (= a video) and using clever software to combine the best bits to produce a clear final image. Dedicated planetary imaging cameras are in fact video cameras that fit in the scope in place of an eyepiece. A single shot generally looks blurred because of the distorting effect of the atmosphere, but with the processing, at the final stage a clear image appears as if by magic. With Jupiter and Saturn currently so low, the problem is accentuated. You might be able to achieve this by taking a video with your phone and transferring it to a PC or laptop for processing. If not, you may have to bite the bullet and buy the proper kit. 😦

Nice shots of Jupiter and Mars.

Here are images of Jupiter and Saturn taken around 00.30hrs BST on 11 Jul 2020. They turned out relatively well, unlike a set I took a few days ago. I suspect 'seeing' is a major factor. Kit: CPC800, ASI224MC, ADC, captured with Sharpcap, processed in Registax6, best 20% of 5000 frames. The monochrome Saturn image was taken in infrared. I did not have a sightline for Mars, or for Comet Neowise.😦

From the symptoms I doubt that there is anything wrong with the camera, but I could be wrong. In any case you would have to return at least the entire Starsense kit, as the dealer is not going to exchange anything other than a complete kit. You could try for a straight refund unless you consider the Starsense really useful (when it works). It may be a Starsense issue, or it may be the kind of un-diagnosed weirdness decribed in some of the Cloudynights posts.

The main issue here is the adequacy of the mount. With a GoTo mount, having an equatorial is only useful for long imaging exposures (no field rotation). You can in fact do a lot of imaging of the EEVA variety with short exposures on an alt-az GoTo mount. There is no point trying for a long exposures if the mount wobbles or fails to track accurately. I have a very similar mount from Celestron and I judged that the tripod was not stable enough even for visual use, prompting me to buy a used manual EQ-5 and also to make up a wooden tripod that would take the SLT mount head. So is your mount going to be adequate for long exposure imaging if placed on a wedge? I think not.

In theory your idea is good but in practice it is a major feat of engineering to get this sort of remote viewing to work. If you get a camera, attach it to the scope and wire it to a laptop a few feet away, you will find that getting this lower tech version to work, be in focus, and have the object on the screen is enough of a challenge.

You can see quite a lot with this telescope but you need to do some homework to refine your expectations. There is a thread somewhere on this forum entitled "What can I expect to see?" Stars as little white dots means the telescope is working properly. Double stars will be a source of perennial interest. If you live in an urban area, you can forget galaxies except for a few bright examples. You can see something of planets but you may need better quality eyepieces than the kit ones, and a Barlow lens. Star clusters can give satisfying views with this kind of telescope. Clear skies!