Cosmic Geoff

The kind of mount you will get bundled with a budget telescope is not going to be great. With the Heritage models mentioned more than once above, you are putting most of your money into the optical tube, (and not spending half of it on a flimsy mount) and if you decide you don't like the tabletop mount, you can put the optical tube on a better mount at a later date.

If you are running the mount from 8x internal batteries, then don't - get a proper external power supply.,

By "initialising" I assume that the mount is going through its power up sequence.

It could be that a poor contact has developed at the power inlet, and when the mount rotates it breaks the power feed.

  Power up the mount, give the power lead a wiggle near the mount and see what happens...

Possible cure: find a sharp knife and open the central split pin of the power inlet slightly to tighten the connection.  Stick some kind of cable attachment to the mount and run the power cable through it to take the strain of the cable moving around as the mount rotates. 

You cannot upgrade the SLT style tripod without having the engineering facilities to make an adaptor to fit between the mount head and the new tripod.  I bought a spare "cup" from Astroboot and made a set of (more rigid) wooden legs for it. It took ages to make but the tripod is now permanently sited in my garden.  It is more rigid then the original and saves setup time.

You should not worry about it too much as the setting circles are essentially ornamental. Even if you could use them expertly, they are only adequate for aiming a very low powered widefield telescope. In the days before GoTo, workable setting circles were at least six inches in diameter, and I have seen circles of two feet diameter in Victorian observatories.

Search and you will find that there are kits from ADM (etc) for attaching a second dovetail to various sizes of SCT using screw positions already provided in the end castings. Then you clamp your choice of rings to the second dovetail.

The second bar also makes a great handle for manhandling the OTA.

Does it work as a low powered telescope? What you show in your photos looks like only half a telescope - the back end (when compared with the telescopes in my collection).

The C8 is a good choice, as it has a relatively large aperture but is light enough to be portable, and has a large focusing range (useful for attaching various accessories.) You still have to choose a mount for it, and the bundled options vary greatly in convenience, cost, portability and weight.

No doubt you will receive advice recommending all sorts of telescopes at all sorts of prices.  It is not possible to buy one telescope which does everything well, which is why there are 57🙂 varieties of telescope on the market.  Occasionally new designs appear, hence we have apochromats, SCTs, GoTo mounts, and very recently 'classical Cassegrains' which were not available to Victorian astronomers.

I have several genuine Ross London telescopes and so have taken an interest in the serial numbers. I have never found a definitive guide to the serial numbers, but the lower the number, the earlier the date of manufacture.  49994 could be of the order of 100 years old. But what is it?  It looks like it could be an exchangeable eyepiece for a spotting scope.

Just now, CraigT82 said:

Well you can trust CN to bash a £125 product because a £3500 version performs better. 

I have the ZWO version and I like it. I use it mainly for imaging but have used it for visual and it does help when targets are low, especially in larger apertures.Takes a bit of practice to set up but well worth it for the price.

I second that.  It's an accessory well worth having.

I have an 84.48 WH LiFePo4 power tank, which I bought because they are lighter and supposedly more durable than lead-acid.  I am happy with it so far, and (wrapped in a clear plastic bag) it was great for working under my car. Also looks like a great emergency light for power cuts.

I also have a car starter, acquired with a telescope, which powers the scope and also can inflate my car tyres.🙂

I also have a 7AH sealed lead-acid battery which I bought several years ago which now seems to have lost capacity. 

I had a similar problem when one of the plastic mouldings forming the extender clamp of a SE6/8 mount leg cracked across.  I stuck it back with Araldite and cut a piece of metal tube to sleeve over the repair, securing it with the Araldite.  Even without paint, the repair is not noticeable unless one crouches down to look.  Note that you do NOT have to do up the clamps too tightly to stop the leg retracting under load.

If you replace the 200PDS with an 8" SCT you will find it is much lighter and easier to handle, and it is much easier to attach sundry devices such as cameras, flip mirrors and filters because of the large focal range.

22 hours ago, FMA said:

Hi, I have a few question.As you can see im bit lost.....If someone would answer me.....

 

1. I f I have a telescope with go to, but im using ipad with skysafari to move it.....is it redundant the goto thing?

2. do you need to polar align a scope and after align to 3 stars every time? can you align just to 3 stars and no polar align? what happens to those which the tree of the neighbour don't allow you to see polaris?

3. its the starsense the only product to align the telescope by itself?

4.if using for visual and go to, why ez its better than equatorial if its the goto moving it for you?

5.to connect ipad to telescope you need a wifi expansion......do the asiair pro include that?

6.if you use skysafari or goto, do you need another small guide scope? I mean. I see people use the big scope and always has a small one with a wide view....but if the goto its taking you to the things, whats the point of the small one?

7.i like the William optics 73 apo. If I buy that one, can I see straight away or need to buy eyepieces?

plenty of doubts as you see......thanks!

 

1: Skysafari etc will not make the GoTo redundant. You still have to use the GoTo setup though you may be able to dispense with the GoTo handset.

2: You do not need to polar align a GoTo mount unless it is the equatorial variety.  You do not need three stars to align - you can align on 1 or 2 stars or 1 planet though this is less accurate.

3: No.

4:  I don't know what you mean.  For visual use, equatorial GoTo is an unnecessary encumbrance compared with alt-azimuth.

5: No idea.

6: A GoTo mount always needs a finder for initial setup. Often a cheap red dot finder will suffice, as you will not be using it during the viewing session.  Guide scope? Are you talking astrophotography? That is a totally different ballgame.

7: No idea. Most vendors supply one eyepiece with an OTA (bare telescope), then you have to buy a set of eyepieces yourself.

If you fitted the motor focuser because of vibration, you can probably ditch it if you are using the EQ3-2.  I found that the AZ-4 and EQ-5 mounts were like solid scaffolding when compared with the lightweight GoTo mount & tripod that came with my 127mm Mak.  They were orders of magnitude less wobbly.

15 hours ago, banjaxed said:

I should have mentioned that I have a motor focuser which does not fit in the present position. I think tube rings are needed to sort things out. Does anyone know if the dovetail fixing nuts are loose or attached to the tube ?

Why are you using a motor focuser at all? I do not have one for my 127mm Mak. In my experience, the more solid the mount, the less one thinks about remote focusing devices.

If I look through the meniscus of my Celestron 127mm Mak, at the positions of the dovetail screws I can just see two screw ends, as though they are screwed through a threaded hole in the tube wall. Further enquiry might be wise.

14 hours ago, banjaxed said:

Just had a thought that it would be easier to move the dovetail to the right position but I am unsure if you can remove the back off a 127 Mak without causing any problems. Has anyone removed the back or is it not recommended ?

I wouldn't take it off if it was mine. And I don't think this is necessary (see above).  Note also that you can swivel the diagonal to any angle you like without having to rotate the main tube in rings.  I have put my 127mm Mak (intended for alt-azimuth mount) on an EQ-5 a few times without feeling I was having a particular problem.

Depends on what degree of rigidity you find acceptable.

The SE 6/8 GoTo mount commonly bundled with the C8 is probably more stable than the AZ5, but still not great. It is stable enough to operate as a portable visual mount but that's it.  The SE 6/8 mount has 1.5" stainless steel legs.   Being a narrow field f10 instrument, the C8 is better suited to rigid mounts with powered tracking etc.

I've seen Mercury with the naked eye in earlier apparitions. It is easier to spot if you know exactly where to look.

As for Pluto, mentioned above, this minor planet will be nearly impossible to see visually.  It is very faint, requiring a large telescope, and at that magnitude there are hundreds of brighter stars in the field. After several attempts, I managed to log Pluto using a 4" refractor, camera, platesolving and star charts.  

I suggest trying out the idea without the friends and family, so you have an appreciation of any difficulties involved.  How, for instance, are you going to find the objects and keep them in the field of view?  How wide is the effective field of view?

If you were buying a car you would shortlist according to the following kind of checklist:

Budget, size of your garage or parking space, no. of seats or luggage space, intended use (commute or track racing), technical spec, fuelling (electric charge point available?).

Same sort of thing with a telescope: budget, max size/weight, GoTo or not, power availability, usability, astrophotography aspirations? 

I did manage to tweak the alignment of a pair of Bresser binoculars which I bought at Lidl. They had two alignment screws on each side hidden under the rubber. They were clearly too cheap to send to a repairer. I had the objective of a vintage telescope replaced and it cost me over £100.

If you cannot source the actual part, you should be able to make up something from standard parts, or have an engineering workshop make one from steel bar stock.

Seeing that long extension tube immediately rings an alarm bell. You need to eliminate it and get the eyepiece closer to the main telescope body. 

I agree with  the comments above.

Don't think that one telescope will do everything, because it won't.

Don't expect it to be cheap, because it probably won't be.

Don't expect amazing views of the planets from a small telescope. To see anything that resembles Michael Wilkinson's image of Jupiter above you need to image it with a large telescope and process the data.

In the UK, buying stuff is cheap, but paying anybody to do work or  make special parts is expensive.

In Algeria as you suggest, importing stuff is expensive but having somebody make parts should be cheap??