Trikeflyer

That’s so true. I am one of the ones who wants to escape complication in my hobbies. I went to a talk at our Astro club about remote observing and it moved to an imaging discussion. It was mentioned that there is so much imaging data available to the willing people who want to try getting into astrophotography through processing this available data, before trying any image capture. Needless to say it peeked my interest so I downloaded trial versions of the various processing software packages and found some online data to dabble with. I didn’t have any tuition and three hours later I gave up because I was so frustrated with not even being able to upload the data into the processing software. I found myself getting wound up and annoyed and after trying to find the online help, I gave up. 😂🤨🤪 On the other side of the coin, I am sure others who enjoy the technical challenge would have loved putting effort into working through it to find the solution. Nothing wrong with either approach and I’m so glad others love this type of challenge as it allows people like me to enjoy the amazing photographs they produce. For now at least I’m sticking to visual, either at my own eyepiece or by observing the photographs produced by those who enjoy astrophotography. As John says what ever makes you happy. Great discussion thread. Steve

I’d say there are lots out there, some good, some bad. Check out a few if you can and if you aren’t made to feel welcome, don’t go again. I think clubs don’t deliberately want to make people feel unwelcome but it can be a bit daunting as a newcomer. You never know though, you might meet the most welcoming group of people who share your enthusiasm fo4 this hobby. Steve

Blimey looks like you had a good night! Thanks for sharing. Steve

I just got a used one from Amazon for £19 incl shipping. Cant wait fir it to arrive! Thanks Paul for the recommendation. Steve

Thanks John. I will await (and bow to) your valued judgement on the skywatcher 150ED. I’m in no rush and the equinox is really a keeper in all honesty. At some point I’d like to look through something higher end like your LZOS or a tak or other high end frac triplet like TEC as well to see if there is enough difference to consider upgrading. As ever I’m sure the law of diminishing returns applies and it’s the ever (with a frac) tricky balance of light grasp vs contrast and optical quality and weight/ size for efficient mounting I guess. Looking forward to your feedback on the ED 150 when it happens. Steve

Nick that’s True. I do have an extension on the ioptron az pro, needed it even for the equinox. The only debate about that though is, is it long enough to allow the Altair scope to miss the tripod when it’s aligning? Could be a non starter and I’m not prepared to risk it just yet without seeing the scope in action. For now I’m going to keep with the 120 equinox - with the feather touch and the quality optics it’s a beast of a scope and if I’m honest, parting with it (even the thought of that fills me with some sense of sadness, so I doubt I could really do it unless I was extremely sure I’d found my dream scope) will be very hard. Plus then as you mention, the wallet will be pretty empty. In five years, there will be a few used Altair’s around and the norm will be 170mm fracs I suspect. Maybe then will be the time to move on 🤔 Steve

Could do but I’ve not heard great things about the skywatcher 150 ED. Might just have been the early ones? Steve

Looks like a really nice scope and the price is fairly accessible. Must admit my interest is peaked. I have an Altair 80mm Ed frac for travel and it’s really nice so the 150 ought to be amazing. I’ve been half looking for a 6 inch Ed frac but I’d have to make it my lifetime scope and sell a few things to get the funds together. I have a 120mm equinox with feathertouch focuser and that’d have to go. It’ll take me some time to mentally reconcile the thought of parting with the equinox though as it’s such a great scope and I’m really wedded to it . I think I’m already talking myself out of parting with it and even if I did, the next hurdle is of course the finance manager to convince. Aspirational new kit Is another great dimension of this fabulous hobby isn’t it.. Thanks for bringing this to our attention @Fozzie if anybody gets one of these I’m keen to hear how it performs. If I get one, I’ll be sure to let you all know. Steve

There might be enough focus travel on the c11 but you may have to use glass path altering barlows/adjusters on the cff. As others have said, I’d try what you have first as the TV is a leading product and in the end, why spend money you don’t need to? The benefit of improved vision due to binocular summation of using two eyes together is noticeable for me. I’ve not used any of the products you mention but I am a big fan of bingo viewing for lunar, solar and the larger planets. Steve

Like all things it depends on what you want to budget for the scope etc and how much time you envisage spending at the eyepiece with the family and possibly on your own. In other words how much you are going to use it. The 130p fits the bill for sure and it is transportable. Without knowing much about you and your family I think I might recommend some other options. I think you shouldn’t immediately dismiss getting an alt az goto set up. Why? Well for ease of finding stuff. What I mean is, when you are sharing the eyepiece, you may want to spend more time with each observer looking at objects rather than you finding them whilst others are getting bored. Now if all you are going to do is the obvious easy to find stuff like the moon, planets and brighter easy to find messiers etc then my suggestion may well be misplaced, also if you are going to spend time teaching the family to find stuff on their own and then to track manually once theyve found them fair enough that might be part of the experience for you. If not, then with a couple of justifications, I’m going to make a different recommendation. 1. Goto and tracking might help when stargazing as a family, especially when swapping between observers - that way, when you switch observers, you won’t have the get the new observer to relocate or recentre the object in question, especially if they are inexperienced, this may cause a few possible challenges. 2. Finding the right balance between portability and utility. Consider 6 inch sct or possibly an 80mm frac - achromatic might be ok, especially with a filter to reduce colour fringing on the brighter objects. Again this may or may not be a real issue in the early days. So just to give an alternative (more expensive) suggestion I suggest the following - most of which are available used if you want to save a bit https://www.firstlightoptics.com/startravel/skywatcher-startravel-102-synscan-az-goto.html https://www.firstlightoptics.com/slt-series/celestron-nexstar-6-slt.html skywatcher star discovery mount which I use for travel with an 80mm Ed frac - very compact and very capable. you could also consider a 5 inch Mak with goto for slightly less £ than the sct but of course there is the slightly restricted field of view provided by a mak. The suggestion of the heritage is a good. I just think like all things there are upsides and downsides with anything you pick. Hope you get a scope, your family will really enjoy it, I’m sure. Steve

Looks fab. The vixen red really accentuates the mount red. Now you can really observe in style! Looking forward to hearing how you get on. Steve

No Paul I’m not able to go this year as I’ll be on holiday. I’m grateful for the offer though, very kind of you. I also ordered the Webb’s double star atlas at the same time so that should be a useful tool on the double star targets. Steve

Thanks. Book ordered. Much appreciated. Steve

I’m interested to find a few open clusters that are not the usual ‘well known’ ones. Anybody willing to share their favourite less well known open clusters? I’m interested to know if when you’re observing them, they’ve conjured up any shapes in your mind. In other words do they look like objects we are familiar with, sort of open cluster asterisms so to speak. Suggestions welcome. Steve

I was up early today too. Have to have some knee surgery. Nothing major 😬. Nice to see the clear sky and yes it was a pleasant surprise nice to see Orion back. Also Auriga and the unmistakeable redness of aldebaran. Winters coming 😀.

Sounds like a good session even it didn’t quite turn out how you expected. I find it’s very easy for me to lose a couple of hours looking at the moon with a scope. Somehow it just seems to draw me in. Great report. Thanks for posting. Steve

Thanks @Pig. On your handset you can. The latest handset comes with the hipparcos catalogue and not the Sao one. I had a long conversation by email with the tech guy at ioptron when I got the mount as I was pulling my hair out because it didn’t have Sao and I’d just got the Cambridge double star atlas with Sao numbers - easy I thought and my skywatcher star discovery mount has Sao - he was very helpful and managed to find me a handset in their factory that would work with the mount and had the Sao catalogue in it. I could have swapped it but would have had to pay £25 for shipping and pay them £200 for the handset which they would then credit me back when I they received my returned handset back! At the time I had the previous firmware on the mount - the firmware it was delivered with - and sky safari 6 was working fine with it so I decided that I didn’t want the hassle and cost of swapping the handsets when I’d got a workable solution. Luckily I can still drive it with SkySafari 5 since I upgraded the firmware, otherwise I would have to go through the hassle swap the handsets as I need Sao to make doubles easier to find and identify. Hopefully sky safari will fix the issue soon 🤨 Thanks for your input to this somewhat challenging IT scenario. The mount is great, these challenges are bound to happen but you wonder sometimes if companies have considered the user experience when making changes? You are lucky to have a handset with Sao on it. I don’t know why they changed it 🙄

Out last night, the mount performed well with the iPad and SkySafari 5. I’m happy. Got my first view of Uranus in the Equinox 120 - it looked better than I expected in all honesty so that was a bonus. So hopefully sky safari will sort the version 6 issue at some point soon? Until then 5 is the answer. Thank goodness there is a solution that works in the short term. Technology pairing aside, and handset catalogue not having Sao is a bit of a miss on ioptron part I think. That said, I do find the mount to be excellent so far. Easy to set up, accurate and very quiet in operation. Definitely feel it’s worth the price tag and glad I chose it. Steve

OK I’ve downloaded sky safari 5 plus which I had previously purchased and it works fine with the latest ioptron firmware. I can’t get sky safari 6.5 to work with the latest ioptron firmware. I am using the iOS version of SkySafari 6.5 so not sure if that is a factor vs the android version? @Pig conforms above that his version of sky safari 6.5 on iOS isn’t working with the latest. Ioptron firmware also. Looking at the SkySafari website it says they are working on a solution but that goes back to July so not sure where they are One guy says he has sky safari pro 6 working but I didn’t want to take the risk of spending £20 to get the pro version and then it not working. I’d say the following, sky safari 6 works well with the slightly older version of the ioptron firmware, if you decide to upgrade to the latest firmware on the az pro, be aware that it may not work with sky safari 6.5 on iOS devices. It seems sky safari are working on the fix but that could take a while? @Woking if you have the android version of sky safari 6 working, that’s good news, maybe the iOS version will be fixed soon. Based on my experience I would caution anyone to consider the above if wanting to upgrade the the latest firmware and using sky safari with the ioptron AZ pro. The tech guy at ioptron did tell me to avoid sky safari 6 so maybe he was referring to the fact that they are struggling to get this combination talking to each other electronically so to speak. The main reason btw I use sky safari is that the ioptron handset doesn’t have the Sao catalogue and I like double stars which are listed by Sao in the Cambridge double star atlas, if the ioptron handset had this feature, I wouldn’t really use the iPad to drive the mount. Ah the joys of astronomy and IT..... Steve

Update. Tried SkySafari 6 plus in iOS I iPad version 6.5 and it won’t connect to ioptron mount at all. How frustrating! I may have to try and go back to previous version of ioptron software and firmware or better still try SkySafari 5 plus which I have previously purchased. Steve

I haven’t set up any password encrytion so cant help you with this. Good luck in getting it sorted. I found ioptron technical staff in the USA to be very helpful by email, you might try asking them if there is a solution? Steve

Saving for some Nikon Monarch 7 8x42 bins to add to the observing arsenal. Hate to say it but folks it’s not long til Xmas now so make sure Santa knows what you want! Steve

Thanks. I got a usb to rs232 adapter from amazon, paid for the ftdi recommended one by ioptron. Upgrade went pretty well with no hitches, now just need to test and hopefully all will go well. I now have the latest firmware version V02 190221 on both handset and mount. Thanks for the tip @Woking I appreciate it very much. I will probably keep with SkySafari 5 for now as I’m happy with it. If anyone else needs to do this, the instructions on the ioptron website are very straightforward and self explanatory. You just need an rs232 to usb connector or an old style docking station and it takes about 30 mins to read through and get it all done. I’m not sure why Ioptron don’t ship their products with the latest firmware though, I got the mount in May and the latest firmware was Feb 2019? I guess they might not be the only culprits for this but it just takes the edge off what is a really nice product. Moan over, all done, can’t wait to try it out! Steve

Sean, Have you got the latest software and firmware? Did you upgrade from the original firmware? Steve

Update: I've just checked and my software and firmware is the version before the latest..... V20 170410 I'm going to risk updating it to the latest V20 190221 ! I am obtaining a usb to rs232 connector to connect to a laptop - the one recommended by Ioptron - and have the upgrade instructions from their website. @Wokingis there anything I should know from your experience before I attempt this upgrade? I must admit i'm a bit nervous in case it goes a bit pear shaped! @FLO anything else I should know before I attempt this upgrade? Thanks Steve