Girders

I think this is true in theory but very optimistic in practice. I started with my 6 year old daughter with a 114p Virtuoso and without the tracking set up it simply wasn't manageable to share. At the magnification you'll want to be using for planets, those 20/30 seconds will go in a flash. You getting it just in vision, getting out the way, moving him/her into place and getting them to look through the eyepiece. Depending on the surface you are on you have to factor in some time for any vibrations to stop. And once it's drifted out of view it's never quite simple to find it again. And in cheaper eyepieces, the image deteriorates as you move from the centre. Also, don't underestimate how tricky it is for small kids to look through an eyepiece properly. You really need them to have time at it. I honestly think a non tracking scope, intended for planetary viewing, without tracking is a non starter for most kids under 11/12. The 1st gen virtuosas (90 SCT or 114p Newtonian) will give small but acceptable views of the planets. With a barlow and the supplied eyepieces you should see Saturn's rings (tiny) and a hint of banding on Jupiter on a good night. Good luck!

Couple of images from Skymax 127 on a Virtuoso (gen 1) mini dob mount using ZWO 120MC-S (USB 3). Pics taken 2021 when they were low in the sky. Suspect I'd have been able to get better if I'd managed to get out much in 2022. Also should note that they were stacked using Mac software (SIRIL) so not the generally preferred apps. Never had any success with it on galaxies/nebula. Narrow field of vision on the scope is problematic - need to have finder and scope perfectly aligned and tracking well calibrated. Have spent entire evenings being unable to get targets in view of the camera - or having them quickly drift off.

Just came across the thread. I've got the Skymax 127 and the ZWO120MC. This is the best photo I managed last year (when it was low in the sky so conditions were poor). Had the camera out for half a dozen or so nights by this point. Not managed anything this year for various reasons. I'm a mac user so thank this was using ZWO Studio for capture and Siril for stacking. No barlow used - hard enough to locate the target without adding a barlow. Mount was a Heritage Virtuoso used for tracking but not goto. Never had any success for any DSO with the scope/camera combination.

Was lucky enough to see them in Norway back in 2013. We were using a Fuji bridge type and played around with the ISO but found 4s was a good exposure time. They show up very well on camera but don't look anything like as vibrant to the naked eye. The last image here is a better representation of what we saw. Fair bit of noise reduction applied to them all. Best tip from me would be that as the camera picks them up so much better, even just a "half click" to focus will give a preview image on the LCD that will show even low level activity so you know where in the sky to look. As suggested, a tripod and using a 3s delay timer or remote release is a must. And a reminder that the cold eats batteries. Have a fantastic trip - and the geysers are well worth a visit - as is the whole "Golden Circle" trip and the Blue Lagoon. We were in Iceland during the summer many years ago, so no northern lights, but plenty to see and do.

+1 for a helical focuser for fine tuning the focus. I really struggled without it. Consider if you need a non-rotating one as otherwise the diagonal will rotate with the focuser.

With kids those ages I think your plan for the Virtuoso mount is spot on. Yes, non goto scopes will give you better optics for your cash, but trying to share views with three young children without a tracking scope is a total non-starter. I use a Skymax 127 on the old version of the Virtuoso and it worked well for sharing with my now 8 year old since she was 4. I can be confident that she gets to see what I've set the scope up to look at. As for the Mak vs 150p on the Virtuoso debate - I think either would be a good choice. The Mak will give a narrower field of vision and it took e some time to get the hang of locating objects - a really well aligned finder scope is a must. It will also require longer cool-down time. The 150p will be quicker to get using and will give wider views but will require collimation from time to time. Your younger kids will likely struggle using the eyepieces - it's quite a skill for them to master so get yourself a smartphone adaptor you can pt on the end so that they can view on the phone screen. Not ideal and can be a hassle to line up but at least then you know that they are seeing what you want them to. Manage your expectations as well - the number of times a year when the planets are in good location for viewing at a suitable time for kids to be out of bed when the weather co-operates is pretty slim pickings. The moon is more reliable but won't hold their interest for too many cold nights. Lastly - my one concern about the new Virtuoso mounts is that they don't have physical directional buttons like the 1st gen do (they required an add on to make them goto and smart phone controllable). This means that when making fine adjustments you'll struggle to press "buttons" on the phone while looking down the eyepiece. Good luck!

For me there are two factors you need to consider before weighing up the merits for the scopes. What has been said previously is absolutely true - any money spent on the mount or electronics is money not spent on the optics, but these two considerations are every bit as important. 1. Where are you observing from? What is the light pollution? If you're observing from an urban area, then an increase in aperture isn't going to make any difference to being able to see galaxies etc. Anything you can see will be a faint grey smudge and even using a goto won't help. If you're in a rural area then the 200p will let you see more and "star hopping" to locate targets will at least be an option. 2. Will it only be you observing? If you're sharing the hobby with someone else having tracking makes a HUGE difference. Accurate goto can be expensive and hit/miss depending on how well you set it up, but even a half decent attempt at setting it up will allow it to keep targets in the eyepiece long enough for you to locate and focus it and then step aside for someone to have a look. Without tracking, things can move out of view very quickly - and while you'll get the hang of nudging the scope to keep up, that's an acquired skill. So, essentially, if you are in an urban area it won't make any difference between the two, but if rural then it might tip things towards the 200P. But Q2 is a deal breaker for me. Wherever you are, if you plan on doing this as an activity along with partner/kids/friend then tracking is a must for me. Good luck whichever you choose.

Don't think so. At least, I've never seen it sold on it's own. May come up second hand or in a FLO clearance but not likely to be often.

That's very close to what I bought a few years back as my first scope to be used with my then 4 year old (I got the version with the 114p newtonian) . Here's what I learned from observing with her over the last 3-4 years... I think tracking is an absolute must for anyone wanting to have small children use a scope. You can find a target and be confident it will still be in vision by the time you've got them in position. Without tracking at the magnification required the planets just move too quickly through the field of vision. And even then they will be ***TINY*** Looking down an eyepiece is a skill. And one that is hard for small kids to master. Even at age 6 upwards my daughter preferred to view through a smartphone adapter on the end. These bring their own frustrations but when set up well mean they can see things, you can see what they are seeing and you can make things a touch bigger using zoom on the screen. Opportunities for kids observing planets are rare. Much of the time they aren't visible during schoolnight friendly hours. Add in a weather factor and it gets very limited very quickly. I'd guess that over the last few years she's only managed to see Jupiter/Saturn/Mars a dozen or so times. I've managed plenty more but late night / early morning more often than not. The moon is a more reliable/available target but loses a "wow" factor after a few times for kids. Best viewing nights are often cold. Kids tolerance for this and general attention span means time will be short. Don't expect her to sit around while you set up etc. If you can observe from your garden leave her inside until you have a target in view. Then send her back inside while you locate the next one. I think either of the two Virtuoso originals would work well for you (90Mak or 114p) but they are the minimum worthwhile starting sizes for me. You'll be able to see that Saturn has rings and possibly some banding on Jupiter when conditions are good. The new versions of the Virtuoso (150p newtonian or 127 Mak) would be a worthwhile step up but are significantly over budget. I later added a 127 Mak which I use on my 1st gen Virtuoso mount. Lastly, don't get too hung up on a telescope as the best way to keep her interest in space alive right now. I don't regret our purchase for a minute, but other things were better and more cost effective. A trip out to a truly dark sky on a clear night will be immensely rewarding even to the naked eye. There's plenty of great resources online - Maddie & Greg's "Lets Go Live - Space Week" on Youtube is fantastic. Cambridge Astronomy Youtube talks for kids are great for when she's just a touch older at 5 or 6. And if you can get her a small meteorite like some of the ones here it's a great way to capture their imagination. Good luck!

I've been surprised how across the board this seems on so many things. Daughter starting to get into BMX at the start of the summer and now looking to get her a bike. One of the main brands/models saying no availability until the updated model in late 2022!

I don't think the mobile phone power banks deliver enough power. I use something similar to this Jump Starter / Battery pack combined with a cable with DC plug at the telescope end and cigar lighter adapter to use in the Battery and that seems to work well.

I think you’re definitely on the right track. I’m another Virtuoso gen 1 owner and the tracking has been great for viewing with my daughter (was 4 now 7). Just makes such a difference to be able to find a target and then let her look without worrying about it drifting off. I do share Wulfrun’s concerns about controlling the scope with no physical buttons - really not sure how that works when looking down the eyepiece. Maybe someone with another wi-fi phone controlled scope can provide reassurance on this? Lastly, you’ll need to budget for power supply - either DC plug for an outdoor socket or power bank as it will eat batteries. If your kids are young I’d also expect they find viewing easier with a smartphone adapter as looking down an eyepiece can be tricky for those under 6/7. Good Luck!

Thanks again for all the suggestions. I'm still using Siril (although more effectively) as I've not found time to investigate running Widows on my Macbook. But I did set up much more accurately for better tracking and had the laptop outside for the bigger screen to assist focusing. And I waited till Jupiter was a good bit higher in the sky. There was thin cloud, and I've only had a quick play with one set of video captured from tonight (and possibly not the best set) but I'm absolutely delighted with the improvement since last week. This clip was around 9000 frames total - stacking best 10% or so of those. I'll not be happy tl I get a decent shot with the GRS on the side facing us, but fluked a transit (shadow transit?) of Io this evening. Very optimistic now that with lots more practice - and some clear skies - I'll be able to achieve the kind of images I was hoping for. Thanks everyone.

Tried any setting it would let me use 🙂 Oh - a whole new set of levels and buttons to play with 🙂 I hadn't realised Siril had this feature but have had a look now. Will have a read and a go using that. And thanks for the Siril docs link - I've been using that and reading the sections on Registering and Stacking with relevance for Planetary but hadn't spotted the specific Planetary guide later in the "manual". A *lot* in there for me to think about. Going to try and get out again tonight and have another go and then spend the weekend trying to make the most of what I capture and look into options of running some of the windows software on my MacBook. Thanks for everyone's comments - really appreciate you taking the time.

Thanks for all the brilliant advice and pep talk. Really appreciated. MacBook is last gen Intel (bought so boot camp for Windows would always be an option). Will have a think and likely do that given that the PC software seems to be at a totally different level.

Thanks. Must admit it's a steeper learning curve than I was expecting (and I knew it would be pretty tough). Big lessons so far are (1) Altitude matters more than I realised (2) If I don't get my set up and finder alignment perfect then I'm going to waste most of my session scrambling to get things in the camera FOV. At the rate of clear nights with good seeing I get in Glasgow I should have something acceptable by around 2027. 😀

Thanks for the comments. Had a very frustrating evening fighting with the wifi adapter and synscan app, and then a horrible half hour trying to find Jupiter with the camera before realising the camera had crashed and wasn't displaying. As a result I didn't have it hooked up to the laptop so couldn't hugely improve my focusing, but I did stick it out until Jupiter was as high as it gets. Still not great, as was rushed before it disappeared behind trees but it was clear even from the one short video I got that waiting for the alt to be 20 degrees rather than 15 makes a big difference - and that was even with a slight haze. Will work on the focus and all the settings when I get some more clear skies, but I'm more confident now that I will (eventually) be able to get something I'll be happy with. Although it may take me til Jupiter hits 35 degrees this time next year! This pic from a 45s video around 50fps exposure set to 5 or 6ms. Think this was best 5% stacked (using Siril still). Sharpened and exposure/saturation in GIMP.

Thanks again. Will give that a go too. Just means having to relocate within the garden in the dark and re-align.

Thanks for looking at the video. Seeing was relatively good here last night. Think I may need to run a longer cable and start hooking up directly to the laptop for a bigger screen. I do use a helical focuser (£59 well spent as I don’t get on well with the focusing knob at all) for fine focusing but at the high magnification even that shakes everything around so much, but hopefully the bigger screen may help. Will keep my fingers crossed for some more clear nights before too long. Thanks

Thanks. MacBook is running Catalina or poss Big Sur and I read Wine doesn’t play nice with the most recent OSs?

I'm not going down the imaging "rabbit hole" - I know my limits - but having dipped my toes in I'd hoped to be able to produce something better than I'm getting. I'm really not expecting stunning images like i see on here, but I've seen images using similar kit that are just on such a different level to what I can achieve it's hard not to feel disappointed and frustrated. So here's my story - any thoughts, comments and suggestions vey welcome. Even if it's "That's probably as good as you'll get" or "Just keep trying". Fed up with the frustration of trying to use a smartphone adapter (exposure being my particular problem) I'd had my eye on an ASI120 MC-S for a while and the summer sale tipped me over. My scope is a Skywatcher Mak 127 which I use on a 1st gen Virtuoso Mount (which I know is alt-az). I set it up that it tracks well enough to keep planets in view on the camera but am not currently using the wi-fi adaptor for go-to (although I do have one). I haven't been hooking the camera up to the laptop (taking it outside makes me nervous!) so instead I've been using the Android ASICAP app and connecting the camera to my Pixel 3 phone. I do struggle to get a sharp focus - it's just so hard to even tell with a grainy on screen image. Using this I'm getting over 2 mins of film in 640 x 480 at 50+ frames per second with exposures set between 5ms and 10ms and gain set to between 60 and 100 (max setting is 100). I'm a Mac User (and don't do Bootcamp) so I'm limited with software options. I'd hoped the ASI Studio software would include the ability to do planetary "lucky imaging" but it doesn't seem to (unless I'm missing something). So I'm using SIRIL, (1) converting the video to FITS images, (2) no preprocessing as I'm not using Darks, Flats etc, (3) Registering using "Full Planetary Disk" (setting a reference frame but to be honest there's not much difference between them) (4) Stacking using "no normalisation" (as it throws up an error) and setting Quality to anything between the top 1% to 50% (I think the images below were 5% or 10%). These were taken 10-11pm last night with clear skies and the planets around 14 degrees alt (I lose it behind trees as it gets higher). Resulting stacked image from SIRIL then processed in GIMP to try to sharpen and reduce saturation. I just feel they are very soft and lacking detail - I'd like my "white" bands to be whiter, and the definition much sharper. I've no idea if the GRS should have been visible on any of the nights I've imaged but I've certainly not been able to pick it out. I think this is only the 3rd clear night I've had with the camera, so I appreciate I might just need to keep trying lots of different things but if there are firm suggestions as to where I'm going wrong or the weak link I'd really appreciate hearing them (especially from any SIRIL users). Video I used for Jupiter can be viewed here (around 250MB) and here are my images of Jupiter and Saturn. Thanks for reading.

The 1st gen Virtuoso mount doesn't have wi-fi built in, but works happily with the Skywatcher Wi-Fi adapter for £65 which lets you control the mount from a smartphone using a Skywatcher app (including the ability to use it as a full feature go-to scope).

So, it's my turn to be "that guy" that everyone looking for advice on a new scope hates... Ok, so I started with the Virtuoso mount with the 114p. Love it and use it now with a 127 Mak. I didn't have to choose between the 114 Newt or the 90 Mak as there was an offer on the 114 Newt. The mount is great for exactly what you say - I pick it up off a table/sideboard in the house and put it down on a garden table 2 minutes later. Light enough even with my Mak on it that it's no bother to move it. And last week I'd have had nothing more to add - I don't have strong views either way on the 114 Newt vs 90 Mak. But.. the I found out about the New Virtuoso mounts and here's where I do the dreaded "for just a little more" thing that we've all hated at some point. £250 for the Virtuoso with either the Newt or Mak. £65 for the wifi adapter (which I have and works really well with the mount) takes you up to £315. £389 would get you the new Virtuoso mount with wifi built in already and with 150p flex tube newt. BIG step up from the 114p and seems good value for an extra £75. It's also a mount big enough to cope if you ever wanted to pick up a Mak 127 (the old style Virtuoso can cope with the weight but the scope hits the base at high altitudes). I think the new Virtuoso with the Mak 127 is too big a step in price at £539, but the 150p version seems a great deal to me. One concern I have about the new mounts though - all control is by your smartphone, so no physical buttons for L/R and Up/Down which I can see being a drawback for fine aligning when you can't easily 'press' to move it while looking down the eyepiece. Sorry for being "that guy".

This is a good choice of scope, but there advantages and disadvantages to the mount options (also consider the new Virtuoso tabletop dob option). Those that use phones for control are great for using GoTo once things have been aligned but I find it really tricky to make fine adjustments in the scope movements using a phone. Much much easier when you have physical buttons you can press while keeping your eye looking down the eyepiece. But the App is much easier for navigating to objects. Whichever option you choose, you’ll want a dew shield and I also added a helical fine focuser as I’m not alone in finding the Skymax tricky to get perfect focus using the rotating knob.

Hi CBear - and welcome! I'm going to leave the telescope thoughts largely to others, although my initial reaction is even for a smart 9 year old, setting up a go-to (computerised) scope would be hard work. It needs carefully set up each time and you need to be able to find some objects to align it to start off. I'm hoping someone with experience of the Celestron telescopes with Starsense which claims to be pretty much fully automatic at aligning will comment on how well this works in the real world. What I will share is my experience of helping my now 7 year old daughter with her interest in space. I got my first telescope really for her when she was four and very interested in everything about space. She's always enjoyed having a look through it when she has the chance, but it's a time-limited experience. What I mean by that is that she's delighted to see Jupiter or Saturn, or some craters on the moon - for 15 to 20 minutes. With Scottish weather it's also pretty rare generally for me to get the telescope out, and even rarer for the interesting planets to be in a good place in the sky at a reasonable time of night for her not to be in bed! I'd say there are probably only 3 or 4 times a year she's been able to have a look at anything other than the moon. Don't get me wrong, it's been great and I've upgraded my scope a couple of times over the years, but that's been for me, not her. There are other much more cost effective ways of keeping her interest alive - our best purchases have been small meteorite fragments - $150 will probably get you 3 or 4 small meteorites of different types - stoney, iron or a 'slice' showing the internal structure. This could be a great 'hands-on' thing for her and you to share regardless of your visual impairment. If you have the option of taking her along to a large public telescope on an 'open night' or to a local astronomy club to get a good and memorable view of the planets that's potentially more useful than her being able to see tiny (and usually blurry) planets in a small scope in her back garden. Although obviously your weather is likely more reliable than mine is! I have great memories of my dad taking a 9 or 10 year old me along to our nearest observatory and seeing Jupiter and Saturn and I think that did at least as much to support my interest as I've been able to do with my daughter with our telescope. Good luck and it's always great to see more dads on here getting their daughters interested.