Cosmic Geoff

Red-dot finders and optical finders do different jobs, and on a bigger scope it is often useful to fit both. One often feels the need of a red-dot finder to get objects in the FOV of a 9x50 finder on a telescope with no handy open sighting points. Playing "Where's Jupiter" when you can see it plainly with the naked eye is annoying. I have a 9x50 RACI and like it. On a small scope a 9x50 may be overkill and you might do better to stick with the red-dot, or if you hate the red-dot, a 6x30 optical finder.

Well done. There was part cloud here so I decided to pass.

Good points. However if your ultimate aim is to own an 8" GoTo outfit, you will have to upgrade both the scope and the mount. An 8" f5 Newtonian is actually very pleasing for looking at star clusters and other deep-space objects, (the Perseus Double Cluster looks great in one) and as I mentioned can be cheap - the problem is what to mount it on. My ultimate answer was to go for usability and get a used Celestron C8 SE (8" GoTo SCT), which I obtained for about half the price of a new one. I could have spent as much or more getting a really good GoTo mount for the 8" Newtonian. I definitely didn't want to persist with a manual mount having found the manually mounted 8" Newt to be an exercise in utter frustration. I just couldn't find things with it that did not show up in the finderscope. You could also try EEVA. I put a planetary camera on an inexpensive 102mm f5 achromatic refractor atop an inexpensive Nexstar SLT GoTo mount and was gobsmacked by some of the near-live images I obtained. It imaged galaxies I could barely see with the 8" SCT even at a better site.

It depends on what kind of observing you want to do. At the ~£400 price point you are still having to make severe compromises between cost and the size & quality of the scope and mount. If you get a Dob, be very clear that you are limiting yourself to a "Dob" style of observing. My own observing is based around GoTo - to give examples I recently imaged Jupiter (which requires a good driven mount and the CPC800 did very nicely. ) This would be extremely difficult to do with an unpowered Dob. Then I looked at some double stars, again using the GoTo. I could not see any of them with the naked eye - I could not even see the constellations they were in through the moonlit murk, so I can't imagine how I could have observed them with a Dob. Another couple of things I do sometimes is look for planets in daytime -this requires GoTo unless you are very clever. Once a year I go to a dark skies site to look at galaxies. To see as many as possible in the limited time, I use GoTo. If you just want to look at planets and other bright easy to find stuff you could use a Dob. For looking at deep sky objects (visual) you mainly want aperture i.e 8" or more. The field of view is of secondary importance as there are tens of thousands of fainter deep-sky objects that will fit into the narrow field of view of a Mak or SCT and a small number of bright well-known galaxies and clusters that won't. Sometimes the photo image won't fit in the field but the core you can actually see visually will. Yes a Newtonian might be more suitable and they are cheap so consider getting a small one as an accessory to an established setup. At the moment I am trying to sell an 8" Newtonian OTA and it seems I can't move it on unless I practically give it away. A step up from 102 mm to 127 mm Mak ought to be a significant change if all the parts including eyepieces are good. Beware the eyepieces bundled with the kit - some are very poor. The 127 Mak Synscan is much the same as one of my earlier and well-liked outfits, except that I have the Celestron version. For some reason the Sky-watcher Synscan is significantly cheaper. On the other hand, the Celestron software is probably easier to use. I've never had much difficulty with it. (See the 64-post 'can't align my Synscan' thread currently running.) On no account buy the 203mm Newtonian on a manual EQ-5 mount - I've tried that combination and it's horrible - not user friendly at all. I could sell you this combo but that would be cruel. 🙂

Given the British weather you won't be plugging and unplugging all that often during the life of the equipment. 😦 I have no figures for you, but the ports should stand a reasonable number of cycles of plugging and unplugging. I have not had any trouble myself other than with the notoriously unreliable 5.5mm power plugs.

Did anyone observe this conjuction? I'm fairly sure that I found Mercury as a telescopic object on the evening of the 17th with a 102mm f5 achro refractor, at about 6 deg altitude, after searching by altitude and azimuth. I did not see Mars, which should have been somewhere at the edge of the telescopic field. I checked in Stellarium what the paired view should look like, but by that time the planets were too low and in cloud.

Here are some things to try: Crop the frame when shooting (I use 320x240) to reduce storage used and increase the frame rate. Use a longer video - I use 5000 frames and have tried 7500. Try different limit settings _ I usually try around 20% (i.e. best 1000 frames stacked) Focus on a star higher in the sky - easier than focusing on a moon, especially if seeing is poor. Use an ADC - you can correct the dispersion in software but an ADC does it better. Image within an hour or two of meridian transit, when the planet is highest. Use a bigger telescope. 😕 I did a side-by side imaging trial once and found that my C8 performed markedly better than the 127mm Mak. Keep trying till you hit a night with decent seeing. At my site the seeing rarely if ever supports imaging at f20 rather than native f10.

You will want to image clusters and galaxies in white light, which means you can try filtering out light pollution from narrow-band sources like sodium lighting using a band-stop filter, but not continuous spectrum light pollution from white LED lights. Nebulae emit much of their light in narrow bands, so band-pass filters will help in viewing or imaging them against a background of continuous spectrum light pollution. The short answer to your question is probably "No".

I would suggest that instead of choosing a telescope because you "like" it, you decide what you want to observe (or image) and buy equipment suitable for that function. Being prepared to spend the price of a new 8" GoTo Dob gives you some leeway. Some tips: Look at what serious deep-space or planetary imagers actually use. What kind of visual telescope would you really like, taking cost out of the equation? Perhaps one half the length and weight of the equivalent Newtonian, with a more convenient eyepiece position that stays near one position, and a large focal range to accommodate accessories that add length to the light path? Not having GoTo gives you a huge bias to only observing objects that are easy to find and track. What kind of mount? These days you only really need an equatorial for long exposure astrophotography. Mounts bundled with 8" telescopes vary hugely in ease of setup, portability, weight, stiffness and embedded cost. A 8" Newtonian atop a EQ5 or similar mount is a pig to use, whether for visual or for astrophotography.

It probably does not matter hugely which of the three you buy - it will have limitations and not support high magnifications. If you are shopping for scope + mount, you might get more aperture and performance for your money if you buy a mini-Dob mounted Newtonian telescope, for around the same price and carry weight.

I don't know the answer, but it does not sound like a motor/gearbox problem. There is no mechanical reason why the gearboxes should run at some (software-controlled) speeds and not others. At motor rate 1 to 5 the movement will be too slow to see unless you are looking in the eyepiece. I have never, ever, selected rates 1 and 2. There may be backlash in the gearboxes which means that if you change direction nothing will move at the output till the cogs all catch up with the motor. The slower the rate, the more pronounced the effect of backlash will be. The motor/gearbox assemblies for Alt and Az are identical so you could swap them over if you think it is going to tell you anything. (it probably won't). If the above notes don't help, I suggest you check that you have an adequate power supply and that the power plug is making proper contact. Then check the motor control firmware. Celestron offer a program that allows you to flash the handset and motor control firmwares, and there is another one that is just for the motor control and allows you to verify the motor control firmware chips and also flash them with new firmware. The exact procedures are too involved for me to detail here. Sorry I don't recall the exact names of these things (I can look on another PC if nobody replies), but the 'Nextarsite' should point you in the right direction.

This is a known issue for the EQ-5 (same tripod), reference posts in SGL. If it is under warranty, send it back and claim a replacement.

I have a 70 year old vintage Ross 70mm refractor that still works perfectly.

I assume the finder in question is the straight-through 9x50 finder on the cast aluminum low profile bracket - the same one I got with my CPC800. TBH I cannot see anything wrong with this finder at all except that it is straight-thru. I don't like straight thru finders as they give me (all too literally) a severe pain. I have taken the straight thru finder off the CPC800 and fitted in an alternate position a finder shoe and 9x50 RACI Skywatcher finder. Ideally I would like a red-dot finder as well to act as a finder for the finder as it can be difficult to aim the assembly and get objects into the finder FOV. My C8 SE has Starsense and a red-dot finder. This is sufficient for visual use. For imaging I can slip on the aforementioned Skywatcher RACI finder to get objects onto the camera chip.

If you can get hold of a diffraction grating (or prism), you can have some fun holding it up to various light sources and instantly seeing a coarse spectrum. If you do this with LED streetlights you will see why trying to filter them out is doomed to be a complete waste of time.

It looks like a genuine Ross of Victorian vintage. It's what is known as an 'Officer of the day' scope and they were manufactured in large numbers. I have several similar examples. Some people on ebay try to sell these things for fancy prices, but without the original leather binding and in only average condition it is probably worth of the order of £50, even if it is in good optical order. Don't try to clean it up yourself as this is likely to devalue rather than improve it in the eyes of keen collectors.

You could buy better eyepieces of higher powers (the BST Starguiders are often recommended) but a set of these would cost a significant amount compared with the original cost of the telescope. I hate to bring bad news, but I found an independent review of this telescope: https://telescopicwatch.com/celestron-astromaster-114eq-review/ which is very unflattering. If this is the telescope you have, I suggest that any purchase of eyepieces be made with the replacement of the 114eq by a better telescope kept firmly in mind. You should moderate your expectations. Even with my 127mm Maksutov, which I suggest is a much better quality instrument, I could rarely see much planetary detail, and I eventually got more out of it by attaching a planetary camera than I ever saw by eye..

For planetary, you need a specialist USB video camera. The Neximage 5 was popular. The entry level Neximage, which I have, is not good enough - I found it disappointing. A lot of people successfully use the ZWO cameras. I suggest you try the ZWO ASI120MC, (available new with USB3 only, or used with USB2) or if you have more cash, the ASI224MC + IR-cut filter, which offers a significant gain in performance. With Jupiter and Saturn rising to only around 15 degrees this season, you also need an atmospheric dispersion corrector (ADC), costing about £100, for best results on these. If these two ZWO cameras +ADC seem too expensive, you've picked the wrong hobby, I fear.😦 Unless you can buy secondhand, or identify the cheaper Far Eastern camera that uses the same chip as the ASI120.

Despite a quick Google I still do not know what Starportal is. I have Starsense setup with my C8 SE, and it works okay. I suggest not using the Starportal till you have the Starsense working properly, even if it means you have to enter the lat/long, the time, the date and the timezone and the summer-time daylight saving manually. The convenient lists in Starsense mean that there is little need for any external lists or catalogs of objects to look at.

If the mount is the same as an EQ-2 mount, you can fit the economy drive, similar to the Celestron one you have pictured, or a better more expensive one one with multiple speeds. I had the economy drive a while ago and it was awful. If it works anything like the EQ-5 + motor, you declutch for coarse movement and use the electric for fine movement. You can find pictures online of the EQ-2 mount.

I don't know, but if the diagonal in the picture has 1.25" (31.7mm) internal diameter the answer is 'yes'. 700x70 is a popular size, so just look up what eyepieces come with other kits and get similar ones (Plossl) by mail order. Somebody here may make a more detailed recommendation. I used to have a 700x70 refractor and used 25mm and 12mm eyepieces with it mostly, IIRC.

You could, but considering you can still get a hardback without paying the prices asked by some chancers, I would not judge it worth the effort. Preparing a text for printing can be a lot of work, and the printer may charge a setup fee.

Interesting that somebody else found the Startravel 102 worked well with a Barlow. Mine seemed to work well with a kit Skywatcher X2 Barlow which appeared to counter the chromatic aberration and give good planetary views.

SW1309EQ is not a common designation. I suggest you try to download instructions for a 130p and for an EQ2 mount.

Antares should rise much higher in the sky in Bangladesh than it does in the UK. If you download the program 'Stellarium' you can do the fov sketch yourself - enter your telescope details in the program and it will show you on screen what M4 will look like if you select it and then go to the telescope view feature. (If you don't read instructions, use the items at top right of the screen 🙂). If you have a finderscope properly set up on your 130EQ, then getting Antares in the main telescope FOV should be a no-brainer. If necessary, get the finder set up by aiming the scope(s) at a distant object in daylight.