Cosmic Geoff

If you want to do serious astrophotography, be prepared to spend a lot of money. The requirements for planetaty imaging and deep-space imaging are quite different. For planetary imaging you need a large-aperture, long focal length scope on a decent mount., plus a decent video camera such as the ASI224MC. A SCT of 8" aperture or more is the kind of thing you want. It is possible to use a lightweight (visual) mount because the post-processing covers a lot of sins, but a rigid and well-behaved mount makes the whole exercise less trying. You don't need an equatorial mount, as the CPC mounts bundled with Celestron's SCTs work well, but this restricts you to visual observing and planetary imaging. For deep space imaging, as others have pointed out, you need a solid eqatorial GoTo mount and a small fast telescope, plus a camera (usually a DSLR). You could start with the Travelscope 70 - if nothing else you will discover at first hand why others use more expensive scopes of similar aperture. Another option is to try EEVA (see sub-forum threads on this). With whatever you have to hand, you can give this a try, and maybe get quick results that surpass what can be seen visually. Don't underestimate what a small and inexpensive scope can do - I managed to image comets and Pluto with a 102mm Celestron Startravel achromat.

With my 8" SCT the highest power eyepiece I use is 8mm, and that does not give a sharp image in poor conditions. I don't have a 2' visual back or 2" diagonal - never saw the point, but your mileage may vary. Your 9.25 inch is a good scope for planetary imaging, but you do not need 2" accessories for that. Using it for deep space imaging of e.g. galaxies is, I suggest, for experts only and may require an entirely different mount. A dew shield is an essential accessory.

Come to think of it, the 6/8 SE mount is not that great and you might want to take this opportunity to upgrade to something better if, for instance, you did not like the amount of backlash or the wobbliness at high magnification. It is the cheapest of several mounts offered with the C8, and adequate for visual use only.

No, a 4SE mount will not be adequate. I have the 6/8 SE mount and am very surprised that it got "snapped in half'. Did it fall off a 3 storey building?🙂 A replacement would be fairly expensive, even if you can find one. The alternatives are to strip down the broken mount and mechanically repair it by glueing or bolting etc, or to buy ANY goto mount that is suitable. You do not have to restrict yourself to the SE mounts. The 6" SCT is relatively light so a Skywatcher Star Discovery mount might suit, or a smaller Ioptron. Do not buy an equatorial GoTo unless you want one for other reasons e.g. to mount an imaging scope.

Define "any good" and what kind of telescope you want to use it in. I have at least one and find it quite adequate in my telescopes.

I suggest you go with the Heritage. A solid equatorial mount like the EQ-5 (about £300 before you add motor drive or GoTo) is worth having in your collection of kit but a cheap wobbly equatorial like the Eq-2 is best avoided. Better to have an alt-azimuth mount, either the basic one thrown in with the Heritage, or a more elaborate mount like the AZ-5. (or the AZ-4).

I note that the eVscope has an aperture and field of view not too dissimilar to my EEVA assembly (102mm f5 achro, ASI224MC camera, SLT mount and laptop. Most of the objects in the report also feature in my EEVA reports (see EEVA reports thread on this forum). Comparing the two, the eVscope has performed quite well. I had all that gear already, but you could duplicate my assembly, including laptop, for around £1000. Though I'm sure the eVscope will be quicker to set up.

Some more images from my session on 15 Dec with 102mm achro f5, ASI224MC camera and SLT mount. The two NGC clusters were too large for the field of this setup. All images are live-stacked, and all show more than one would see visually with a small or medium-sized telescope.

That is exactly my experience. All the star cluster images I took with my 8" SCT looked awful. I think it's the seeing. The star cluster images I have taken with my Startravel achromat (one quarter the focal length) look much prettier.

Here is an image captured EEVA style with my 102mm achro refractor (Startravel), ASI224MC camera and SLT goto mount. This was a live stack of 21 frames, 3.6 seconds each. I used "precise goto" to find the comet and was then able to see a likely object on the screen. A platesolve indoors later confirmed the fuzzy object marked was the comet. Part of the open cluster NGC1528 also appears in the image.

Given the responses to your thread on the 8" Dob, why do you expect a 10" Dob to be any different? Imaging with astronomical telescopes is well documented online; I suggest you do some background reading about what kinds of telescope are suitable for what - it is too involved to summarise here. Check the thread on imaging on this forum and see what telescopes and mounts were used - that should help answer your questions.

I do not see any reason to suppose it likely that the drive would run at the wrong rate, if correctly assembled. Since it is obviously running, you have overcome one hurdle, i.e. making the gears mesh.

An alt-az Goto would be sufficient for visual use and easier and quicker to set up (no polar alignment worries) Can you see Polaris from your restricted view site? I'd say that the Star Discovery alt-az mount is not up to the job - it is only intended to carry a lightweight OTA of AFAIK about 5Kg. There are other alt-az GoTo mounts that would do the job, but in general they are bundled with kits, exotic or expensive. Though you could look at the iOptron mounts and ask yourself if you want to go there. BTW, why do you hang a heavy weight under your AZ-4? I have one, and found it so rigid that adding stability aids is utterly unnecessary. This brings us to equatorial GoTo mounts. An EQ3-2 Pro seems marginal in terms of capacity, even for visual. An EQ5 Pro Synscan would do nicely - except that it requires polar alignment. OTOH once you have polar aligned it the once you could mark where the tripod legs go. This has the same (steel) tripod as the AZ-4, BTW, so it won't be any heavier to carry (especially if you stop dangling that weight under it.) These popular mounts cost, IIRC, around £550 new, so if you find one under £370 used you will be doing well. There are also combined AZ/EQ GoTo mounts such as the AZ/EQ5 which might be just the thing, but you may well find them too expensive. Be aware that a Goto mount does require some setup time - significantly longer than with your present set-up.

Yes, and yes. For what it's worth, I did a side by side comaprison with my 127mm Mak and my 203mm SCT imaging one or two planets, and the larger scope delivered a markedly better image.

That's normal. 😕

I assume you have the 4SE Maksutov outfit. This instrument has a long focal ratio so the choice of eyepiece design is not critical. Plossl eyepieces should be fine, if of reasonable quality. try the ones you already have. You could try the 14mm eyepieces you cite (it's your money) but IMHO there is no point on spending this amount when a Plossl costing £30+ will work fine. Also I would not recommend using 2" eyepieces as they are heavy and bulky, and if you look closely at the scope you will see that the hole in the back & main mirror is quite small... What to observe? Try the 'Sky Tour' incorporated in the Nexstar handset. That is what it's there for... 🙂

I forgot about the occultation but it was overcast anyway all day.

Having to re-enter the date and time each time you turn it on is normal for a Nexstar. It should retain the latitude and longitude once set. There are plenty of settings to get wrong, any of which will cause it to point to the wrong bit of sky: latitude/longitude, time zone, daylight saving, date format, time of day. I have found that doing a daytime setup between noon and 1pm can also catch one out (should be 00hrs and PM). If the scope points to the wrong patch of sky, I would respectfully suggest that it's telling you the settings are wrong, even if you think they are correct.... These scopes were made for the USA market, so all settings are in US formats. Lat/long setting is also non-obvious and catches out many new users. The current Nexstars do not need to be pointed North (or anywhere else) before starting alignment, with the exception of the Starsense accessory, but an old one with a mount that can be used in equatorial wedge mode may differ. Is the mount being used in alt-az or equatorial mode, and are your settings consistent with this? (My Nexstar SLT has EQ North and EQ South in the menus, even though these seem to have no practical use in an alt-az outfit.) I scrolled through the Nexstar 8 manual you cite, and note that it apparently tells you to start with the scope aligned North in order to locate the alignment stars. AFAIK, Sky-watcher Synscan mounts still work this way, but the recent Nexstar mounts dispense with this and assume that (a) you can find alignment stars yourself or (b) the three star alignment (on three unidentified bright stars) will sort it for you. I wouldn't try updating any firmware before you have got the system to work. Later Nexstars use a different (Nexstar+) handset, but as all the clever stuff is in the handset, if you swap the handset for a later version it will probably work. BTW, a Starsense system might work too (but check the small print). The 5.5/2.1mm power plug on the recent Nexstars is not very good and can cause problems with poor contact. Recently I had the plug on my C8SE shift during a session, scrambling the software, and the same night the OTA started traversing downwards at high speed in altitude, for no evident reason. I suspect the plug again.

ROFL😁! I have one of these - a bigger version of the C5 you mentioned in your first post. Calling it suitable for astrophotography is being a bit economical with the truth. In the form of the fairly portable C8 SE GoTo it's about as suitable for astrophotography as a family car is for the Indy 500. Put that 12.5 pound OTA on a decent (very heavy, non-portable) alt-az GoTo mount in the form of the CPC800 and you have a fine outfit for planetary imaging. Put the C8 OTA on a decent equatorial GoTo eg a HEQ5 or EQ6 (decidedly heavy and non-portable), and you again have a decent setup for planetary imaging, or if you an advanced amateur imager, a setup suitable for imaging small galaxies (though some people may have opinions on how suitable it is even for that). For visual observation of galaxies, for the past two or three years I have made an annual trip to dark Devon with the C8 SE. The portable setup is easy to transport and carry outside, the aperture is big enough for a decent view, and the GoTo mount makes it possible to find enough objects in the limited time available to make the effort worthwhile. I see you are tempted by astrophotography: as indicated above this needs some serious thought. If you want widefield images, e.g of M31 & companions, consider a DSLR on a lightweight tracking mount. Also, I have has some success with a planetary camera attached to a 102mm f5 achro refractor on a SLT alt-az GoTo mount, on a wood tripod, using stacked short exposures. This is a form of EEVA (see the EEVA sub-sections in this forum.) Surprisingly, this setup matched or surpassed what could be seen visually with an 8" SCT.

I have a 127mm Maksutov (about the same aperture as yours) and the images of planets I took with it were sometimes far superior (after processing) to what I could see visually. I suggest you find and check out the "what can I expect to see" thread somewhere on this forum.

Thanks, I expect I can find a box.

Like many people, I tried imaging the Sun's disk on Nov 11. Equipment: 127mm Maksutov, full aperture solar filter, EQ5 driven mount, Celestron Neximage solar system imager camera & ASI120MC camera. My main difficulty was that sunshine/bright daylight and laptop screens don't go together well. I could not see what I was doing with the Neximage at all, so could not get it in focus, and only managed to focus the 120MC on the limb after a lengthy struggle, and then image a part of the sun with Mercury. My question is: how do you experienced solar imagers manage?

I got a really good view of the second contact with my 127mm Mak and full aperture filter. Mercury was sharply defined and black. Tried imaging (sunlight and laptop screens are not a good combination). Eventually got an .ser with ASI120MC and Sharpcap. Sky is cloudy now. (14.24)

I picked up a copy of Philips' "2020 Stargazing month by month guide to the Night Sky" by Couper & Henbest at a discount & remainder store for £3 (reduced from £6.99) It looks like a handy little book, especially for novices, and contains a sky map for each month, monthly objects of interest as well as a listing of the year's special events (conjunctions, etc) and a guide to astrophotography.

Here are the images related to the post above. The images of M1 and M33 may not be the greatest, but I have never been able to see these objects visually even with an 8" telescope. Likewise, the comets are reported to be around mag 11 or 12.