joncrawf

No worries. many thanks

Do you know if this would be suitable (with appropriate plate) for a SW 200p? Is it the 50mm travel version? Many thanks

Might be able to help, and I'm local to you. PM'd with some contact details

Thanks Paul, what you say makes good sense. But I'm still confused! If you're 'hand balling' the scope presumably the mount can't 'know' it's position until i accept the alignment in the handset? I'm confused as to why it can find it's way from the park position (pointing accurately at Polaris) to some random point in the sky in the general direction of Vega but then find it's why back to Polaris. Getting foggy now so I'll have to give up tonight and try another time.

Hi All I have been waiting for a clear night to set up my new NEQ6 mount. It's new to me but I picked it up 2nd hand a couple of weeks ago. So far I've done an approximate polar alignment which I'll tweak and improve when the pier adaptor finally arrives from Pulsar Observatories and I can mount it permanently on my pier. However, when I start my two-star alignment procedure (beginning at the home position) the scopes slews off to find my chosen star (Vega or Altair this evening) but only points approximately in the right direction - I'd estimate I'm off by 5 degrees or more. I presume I should be much closer than this? Have I made a schoolboy error in my initial set-up? It almost seems like I might have entered incorrect info into the handset but I've double checked all of this several times. When I use the 'park scope' function the scope returns quite happily to Polaris. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Jon

I'm tempted. Could you tell me approximately where you are in Powys, please?

I started out with a home made concrete pier but I wasn't too pleased with the result. So, in the end, I caved in and bought the Rigel. I bought mine with an EQ5 adapter plate but I intend to replace it for an EQ6 plate later on this year if and when I upgrade my mount. It arrived on a pallet and I moved it into position fairly easily with a sack trolley - 75kg sounds about right. It's been in position for a few months now and I'm happy with it. I think it's a lot of cash to pay for a simple piece of engineering, but it's tidier and more convenient than my previous solution so I'm not complaining.

I don't think it would do any harm to the telrad 'optics' but it's likely to leave them smeary and difficult to use. If you have a trawl through the DIY section you'll see that some folks have made dew heaters from small resistors and basic circuitry kit from Maplin. I use a hair drier as i have 240v power available to me in my garden obsy.

Good advice above I think. I also found this book helpful https://www.firstlightoptics.com/books/turn-left-at-orion-book.html

Genuine question by BTW, re-reading it I'm not sure if it comes over more confrontational that I'd intended!

Why? I'm a relative noob but I enjoy double stars. Always much easier to spot than hunting down some obscure 'faint fuzzy' in light polluted skies. I enjoy being able to split a double for the first time. When you split a pair there is no doubt about it, whereas discerning the dust lanes in M31 (for example) to me is a bit of a dark art that requires more experience than I possess, for the time being.

useful links, many thanks

It's a great quote. I clipped into Evernote for future reference. Thanks for sharing

Thanks for the heads up. I miss Jupiter in the night sky, but at least we can get a Jupiter / Juno fix by proxy!

You should've been a script writer for 'Allo 'Allo!