Cosmic Geoff

The autofocus works fine without a Bahtinov mask. I have not obtained or made any accessories for my S50, which I received in September. The only sensible accessories IMHO are a taller tripod, or alternatively a 3/8" spacer/adapter to mount it on a standard astro tripod. And a reflective strip so you can see where the S50 is pointing in the dark.

Study this table carefully, after setting it for your position on Earth: https://heavens-above.com/PlanetSummary.aspx?lat=51.993&lng=-0.7242&loc=Unnamed&alt=0&tz=GMT I draw your attention to the angular size of Mars, and the time it is highest in the sky (meridian crossing). What do you think is the likelihood of seeing anything of Mars with your telescope? Compare with the view of Jupiter which you should be able to find any evening.

The Celestron f6.3 focal reducer is specifically intended for f10 SCTs, and may not work so well with a Maksutov. See this thread here: Skymax 127 Maksutov-Cassegrain with Focal Reducer - Cats & Casses - Cloudy Nights "Try with what you've got" is a good policy, but you may get better results with a small imaging refractor.

I have the Startravel f5 102mm. It has significant chromatic aberration, and I made little use of it till I found it worked well for EVAA (q.v.) I would not recommend the EQ1 or EQ2 mounts - too wobbly.

As I just explained, you can't. The Astro Fi 127 tripod has a bowl-shaped head.

I am not clear what your objection is. If you buy this and decide you don't like the tripod, you will then have to buy a different mount and tripod and attach the OTA to it via the standard dovetail. TBH the tripod does look on the flimsy side. I am looking at an ebay photo for an Astro Fi 127 on offer for £547.* It is common for the tripods of entry level kits to be on the wobbly side. The tripod of my Celestron 127 SLT Mak was more wobbly than I would have liked, but I used it for a while. (I also acquired another tripod head and made wooden legs for it, but that was a lot of work). Unless you can identify a suitable mount that can be swapped onto a more substantial tripod later, you will have to resign yourself to either putting up with a tripod that may not be as rigid as you would like, or buying an OTA and pairing it with a rigid mount and tripod, which if you go for a mount like the EQ-5 Synscan or the Celestron AVX, could cost you a lot of money. *A potential for profit when the £300 offer expires? 🙂

You can do planetary and lunar imaging with a C8 SE, but it will be a pain because the mount is only suitable for visual use. The 183C looks like overkill for planetary imaging (or solar), and you will not manage much in the way of deep sky imaging unless you buy a more suitable mount, like the HEQ5, AVX or EQ6. You will probably also need some gear for autoguiding.

There is no such thing as an allrounder. If you buy a Seestar S50 you have the option of editing and stacking its output to your heart's content, or just using the image sent to your smartphone. I suggest you invest in Steve Richards' book "Making Every Photon Count" before you reach for your credit card to buy any separates imaging gear.

For £300? Why is it so cheap? Looks like you would be getting the same OTA as mine, plus a free mount. Good OTA, basically the same as the Skywatcher 127 Mak. I seem to recall the 6" SCT astro fi being offered at such low price that one was effectively getting the OTA + a free mount.

Yes, that will work.

It's up to you whether you swap the C6 SE for the C8 SE. There will be some gain in performance, OTOH it's bigger and heavier, more load on the mount (it's the same mount). I suggest that you stop fretting about eyepieces till you have used the scope for a while. As we have already pointed out, with a f10 scope, the choice of eyepiece is not critical. There is no relationship between Bortle and seeing, vs magnification, other than that higher powers may get less use if the seeing is bad.

Since you have the DX130AZ, I don't quite see what you would gain by swapping it for the DX5. The DX5 has a more compact optical tube but is not obviously more portable. SCTs are great scopes. They are more expensive than Newtonians because they are more difficult to manufacture. They do have a narrower field of view, a fact which is trotted out every time SCTs or Maksutovs are mentioned, but the practical consequences of this are exaggerated. Note that the other scope which 'everybody' tells beginners to buy, the 8" f6 Dobsonian, has roughly the same field of view as the DX5. I should think that the DX 130 and the DX5 perform much the same on DSOs, if you set them up for the same magnification. Which if you are observing from New York City means "not much to see". Extended objects of low surface brightness, like galaxies cannot be seen well under light polluted urban skies.

I have a C8 SE and can confirm that while it is a good instrument for visual observing, it is a pain to use for planetary imaging and totally unsuitable for deep space imaging. And yes, you do have to do a major re-focus when swapping an eyepiece for a camera. That big camera on the end of a slim diagonal and visual back looks like an accident waiting to happen. My advice: if you want to do planetary imaging, trade the C8 SE for CPC800, or get a HEQ5 mount to re-mount your C8 OTA. You may also need a more suitable camera, depending on the ASI183MC's spec. If you want to do deep space imaging, buy some totally different kit, depending on what sort of object you want to image, as deep space targets vary widely in size from many degrees to a few minutes of arc. The popular 'small refractor' is mainly suited to mid-sized targets.

I suggest that you resist the temptation to unscrew any parts of your camera other than the black nosepiece. If you do open it you are likely to get dust on the sensor or the inside of the optical window. Then you will get dark spots on your images which will prove very difficult to remove. 😰 Just leave well alone.

I suggest you download the user manual and read it from beginning to end. If the alignment procedure is anything like that of the usual Nexstar+ handsets, you have to align on two stars for usable results. Other options are one star (inaccurate) three un-named bright stars, and planetary. You need to select one of: Skyalign (3 object) Two star, two star auto, one star, or Solar System, IIRC.

Having seen what the Seestar S50 can do in moderately light-polluted areas in imaging nebulae, with its built-in switchable light pollution filter, I ordered the similarly specified 1.25" filter made by ZWO. This one: ZWO 1.25" Duo-Band Dual Narrowband Filter | First Light Optics I only managed to try it out on one night, because of the near-permanent cloud cover, but used with my 102mm EAA rig it produced an image similar to the Seestar image of the M1 nebula, but double the image scale and better resolved. This filter, or other filters of similar specification, should produce impressive results with emission nebulae, but I don't expect it to work on galaxies.

You're right. It's not simple to set up a remote controlled telescope, which needs a GoTo mount, probably a remote controlled focus, a remote controlled filter wheel, plate-solving, a widefield camera, and a control box local to the mount. I checked the review of the SVbony camera in your link, and was not impressed. My Seestar S50 takes better pictures than that.

My first GoTo scope, also a big step-up from a supermarket refractor, was the Celestron 127mm Mak SLT, a GoTo scope. It took me one evening to master the GoTo system and after that I found the GoTo a massive advantage for finding things in semi-urban skies. I did not consider its field of view to be a problem. I did also buy a 102mm f5 Startravel for a wider field of view, but rarely used it till I realised I could do EVAA imaging with it. I have never had any use for manual aiming - I always set the GoTo and let that move the mount. I still have this scope (the Mak) and its performance on planets (for its size) is excellent. Essential accessories: a dew shield, an external power pack, and better eyepiece in the range 8 to 10mm.

The Astro Fi 6 SCT is apparently intended for visual use, and you may be able to do planetary or lunar imaging with it, for which you will probably require a planetary camera and a laptop running Windows 10 and Sharpcap, etc. The Astro Fi mount on the other hand is meant to be controlled by a phone or tablet AFAIK. If the mount accepts an optional Nexstar+ handset, then you could cable this to the laptop and control it all that way. (Or just use the handset).

An 8" telescope will enable you to view large numbers of galaxies from a dark skies site. I personally experienced this by taking my 8"SCT (with GoTo) to a dark site in Devon on a couple of occasions. Your choice therefore is whether to attach a finding apparatus to your XT-8, or to to ditch it and buy a Celestron C8 SE Goto scope or equivalent. If the former, you could look into digital setting circles, possibly available as an option on Orions, or as an add-on. Or look into the popular Celestron Starsense app system. It is only available bundled with a telescope outfit, but some people have been buying the cheapest scope in the range, and transferring the holder and license to their preferred scope.

See page 40 of the Seestar S50 thread here, halfway down, post by MonsterMagnet of Horsehead, etc. He says he took this in Bortle 9. None of that nebulosity can be seen visually at all from an urban site.

You should try using the scope before rushing to buy more stuff. At f10, expensive eyepieces will not necessarily produce a markedly better view than $30 Plossls. The f6.3 focal reducer is really intended for imaging use (and see my comment in the other post.) If used visually, it will just reduce the image scale and give a wider field of view - an effect you can obtain more cheaply with a low power eyepiece. The sole effect of the Celestron heater ring is to warm the faceplace up a bit and counter dewing. Find out if you actually experience any dewing with the dewshield in place, before buying, as you don't want another lot of cables trailing around to little purpose.

Dual-band filters will improve the view of nebulae by passing only the nebula narrow-band spectral emissions. But don't get your hopes up - most of these things are inherently so faint that they only show up on a photographic exposure. I have an OIII filter which I bought for viewing nebulae. it did make some things a bit clearer but I wasn't impressed and have not tried using it for ages. For info on the Seestar S50, read the thread on this forum. From a dark skies site, it will image any deep sky object of suitable size, but as many have found it's magic for imaging nebulae from urban sites, including many objects not visible at all by 'visual' observation. There's no reason why you shouldn't buy a cheap Windows laptop (new or used) It will run more astro programs and if it suffers a mishap in the dark it won't be such a tragedy. ☹️ Re. any sort of imaging, including EAA, you scope outfit is not suited to any sort of imaging except planetary imaging. I took some nice planetary images with my C8 SE, but it was such a pain that in the end I bought another 8 inch SCT with a better mount solely for the purpose.

You can forget about seeing any nebulae even with filters, except maybe M42 Orion Nebula. If you really want to 'see' nebulae from your location, invest in a Seestar S50 which with its built-in filters is startlingly effective at imaging nebulae even from urban locations. For visual use, light pollution filters are probaby going to be useless. The best light-pollution filter is a trip to dark countryside. Do not fuss over eyepieces or rush to buy more till you have tried the scope for a couple of months. You have the Zoom eyepiece, and with a focal ratio of f10 your scope will be forgiving of eyepieces so any eyepiece that isn't complete rubbish will work. I mostly use a 25mm Plossl (came with scope) 15mm Plossl, 8-24 zoom and a choice of 8mm or 10mm eyepieces with my C8.

Bortle 8-9 is bad, and the local seeing and transparency will not be great either, but the C6 SE is as good a choice as any for these conditions. You should concentrate on observing the Moon, planets, double stars, star clusters, and the brighter planetary nebulae (i.e. objects of high surface brightness). Attempts to observe galactic nebulae and galaxies will be unrewarding under your conditions. You appear to have accessorised the scope well. What do you intend to do with the ES 2x focal extender? It will give excessive magnification if used with the 7mm eyepiece. You do not mention an external power pack, but you should get one rather than relying on the internal primary cells. Good news: if you are able to take your outfit out of the city to darker skies, with the Starsense it will make a fine quick-setup package.