fifeskies

Dobsonians are a good way to start the hobby. The bigger aperture will give a much better experience on DSO. The 250px while being an excellent scope may be a bit large for a 13yo starter scope, not easy to move out into the garden without help. The much more affordable 150p is still a good performer Sky-Watcher Classic 150P Dobsonian | First Light Optics and the money saved to go on a couple of better performance eyepieces, these eyepieces will stay with him as he upgrades his telescope over time (ohhh .... it will happen if he gets bitten by the bug). All the skywatcher models have basic starter eyepieces , fine to begin with but an upgrade will get the best out of the telescope. This is much more portable while still a big telescope. There is a middle ground Sky-Watcher Classic 200P Dobsonian | First Light Optics , which is probably a more popular size, fine for adults but getting a bit big for a 13yo to move out unaided. I used to have a 200p , was my first serious telescope. Trouble is all 3 models are virtually unobtainable due to Covid supply chain problems that are unlikely to resolve for some time. All is not lost however as there is a good 2nd hand market on these , just buy from a reputable source like the buy/sell section on this forum.

45 second subs are not that long for the fainter DSO , but if you are tracking without guiding you may be limited in exposure time before you get some trailing. As you found it is fine for the likes of the bright Orion Nebula , the fainter objects will be easier if you can run longer exposures Orion Nebula is about Mag +4 Crescent is about Mag +7.4 This is a lot less bright , the mag scale is logarithmic , each step being approx x 2.5 (so 3 mag is 15.5 times) A 3.4 mag difference means it is about 20 times fainter In general I use guided subs of 180 seconds to 360 seconds and stack about 60 to 120 images for objects that faint , though it does vary by target. That all said GIMP when used in the way the tutorials show you is pretty good at extracting even very low data from frames that look at first to have almost no content.

Try these 2 , I found them very good GIMP Astrophotography Editing Tutorial - YouTube DeepSkyStacker and GIMP - How to capture a galaxy with your DSLR, Part 2A - YouTube

I use my Equinox with a Televue 0.8 flattener This reduced the FL to 400 from its native 500 , and allows nice wide views , I can get the whole North America Nebula in a single shot.

I bought a load of GX16 Screw fit and keyed so cannot get reverse polarity. Fairly cheap in lots of 6 pairs of male and female on an auction site. I use the 2 pin type for 12v (13.8v)

My Equinox has been upgraded with a moonlight focuser. Very smooth focus with no drift.

I love my Equinox 80 , nice wide field it has. My ST80 guide scope and ZWO290 sit side by side with it on my NEQ6 and I get 360 second subs from the stable platform. A good second hand NEQ6 would be something to consider , they appear reasonably often.

Most of the easy DSO are fairly big (Not saying there are not good smaller targets , they just tend to be a bit more challenging) Compare below the sensor size outputs for your scope and both cameras And being faint some of the smaller ones will need guiding to get them , so the ZWO is best given guiding duties until you have used your DSLR as main camera to learn how it all works.

I have an ZWO ASI 290 which is great for planets with Sharpcap (similar to your 120) For DSO capture I use the very capable free software APT (Astrophotography Tools) and use the ZWO for guiding with (PHD2) There are several excellent uTube guides on this. I use exposure times of 90 sec to 360 seconds depending on target (per sub frame) and integrate up to 2 or 3 hours of exposure , without these long exposure times all you will see is an empty frame with a few stars , (if you are lucky with bright stars) For DSO I use my D600 DSLR , (the ZWO are really very narrow field of view and only suitable for very tiny DSO) Take a look at this Orion Nebula (M42) with a DSLR, Start to Finish - Deep Sky Astrophotography - YouTube and get that excellent book referenced above Making Every Photon Count - Steve Richards | First Light Optics before making any new purchases.

Some 2 core rubber cable 1.0mm2 (or better at 1.5mm2) to a DIY splitter box on the far end is easy to cobble together. Its only 13.8v so an easy DIY. Should cost you £20 to £25 all in. Rewire a cheap multiway socket direct to the longer cable for simplicity. I have to say however I am not a fan of the cigar type sockets , there are smaller more reliable solutions.

Nothing to worry about there. You don't need to clean the base of the cell , its there purely to hold the mirror surface on the other side. The 2 sets of screws around the base ring are the collimation screws. It is worth collimating your telescope, I suggest you take a look at uTube videos first. I used a collimation laser on my 200p (and still use it on my CT10L) , I bought mine used on here or was it ABS the other reliable place for used astronomy bits. You can get one on the usual auction site , but if you do that check the collimation of the laser before you use it on the telescope , again uTube explains how to to this. Checking the laser , and collimating the telescope are both very easy. I could collimate my 200p in about 5 minutes. I found it did need doing fairly often , but its not a big problem just to check it now and again. There are other ways to check collimation without a laser , look on uTube .

If you mean the base of the mirror cell this will not affect the mirror side. A photo would help to give you advice. Just let the telescope dry out on its own after dewing up , this is usually better than trying to wipe it off. The 200p is a very nice scope , I used to have one and you will get to see plenty interesting targets with it. Once you have had it a while and got used to it, I would upgrade from the supplied eyepieces , BST starguiders and Celestron X-Cel eyepieces are very good upgrades and not as expensive as the elite brands , and can often be found used on the forum for sale in good condition. They will give a nice boost to the quality of the image.

Worth just checking balance is not well out but my NEQ6 is reasonably forgiving for balance and will guide even a bit off without much complaint. I do always do the 3 axis balance check when changing scopes , but swapping from camera to visual I don't usually rebalance , just assume the diagonal and eyepiece are close to the camera weight. Newer versions of Stellarium have done away with Stellariumscope , might be worth upgrading to the new version , though I doubt this is behind the drift issue. (as in , it is now integrated into the program and not loaded and run separate) I assume you have checked that your cables are not tight and dragging against the mount.

What software is driving your mount. I use APT and guide with PHD2 It does not sound like backlash if its rapid and well off target. Do you know if its wandering in both Dec and RA

Backlash is a likely culprit , this can take a while to settle back again , try leaving it for 5 minutes and it may just catch up with backlash. I always let my NEQ6 just sit for a short while when I slew to a new target before platesolving to the target. If it drifts for more than 5 mins its likely something else unless your backlash is very large.

If you have only got the supplied eyepieces they are not as wide a view as some of the more expensive ones. Below is the expected view today with your scope and a 20mm 60 degree eyepiece , they just still fit in.

Try Stellarium , using the Oculars setting. If you input your scope settings and eyepiece you will get an accurate rendering of what you can see. Right now both fit in an 800mm scope with a 10mm eyepiece With your 1300 fl scope you will need around 15mm eyepiece to get both. In a day or so will need 20mm eyepiece

Sky still bright and at a very wobbly 6 degrees above the horizon so very poor seeing, but they are visible just. Didn't have time to confirm focus was as good as it could be before they set behind the hill

If all you are powering is dew bands the supply can happily live indoors and use a long 2 core cable from the 12v outlets to the dew bands. There will be a small voltage drop over a long cable but this will not significantly affect the dew bands. I would use as a minimum 2 x 0.75mm cables unless you have a very long distance to go (over 50m). 0.75mm is about 1.5 ohms for the return loop if all 50m is used So with a 25m cable (0.75 ohms loop) and with say 2 dew bands at 1 amp each (about 4 inch OTA size) the voltage drop at full power is around 1.5 volts , which will only drop the heating by a small amount and is likely to be around the usual setting in any case (dew heaters rarely get used at full output , normally dialled down a bit with a controller) With a 13.8 style power supply , you actually hit around 12v at the scope end with this type of load so its a perfect match. There is enough spare capacity for powering a handy red led lamp as well. You can easily make a small splitter box in a hobby case for multiple 12 v outlets. A reel of 2 x 0.75mm cable is relatively cheap purchased online , 50m PVC is about £13 , or the better option of rubber cable is £25 for 50m. NOTE If you are using this for powering your mount , this will not work as well , the high current draw when slewing will drop the voltage too far , you could overcome this by using far thicker cable (eg 1.5mm2) , but the cost rises significantly

For a good tutorial on using GIMP after stacking with DSS try here GIMP Astrophotography Editing Tutorial - YouTube

I do use "Clear Outside" but it is best taken with a pinch of salt and always look at the real conditions. Currently my forecast is RED Actually , the sky is all clear apart from some cloud out low in the West , has been this way all afternoon when the app had it red with 40 to 67% cloud cover. Always take the effort to confirm predictions.

You cannot really get all of those in the one telescope unfortunately. In particular planets and DSO require very different performance. It would help if you can indicate what price range you had in mind. Many people start out with a small to medium dobsonian as a first telescope, easy to use for beginners and lets you see most objects . Sky-Watcher Heritage-150P Flextube Dobsonian Telescope | First Light Optics is a good starter telescope and being a flextube can fold down small for transporting. A review of it here Sky-watcher Heritage 150p Flex Tube Dobsonian Telescope - New for 2020 - YouTube

Looks like OP has switch mode type, for the first smaller unit , other one is hard to tell but could be linear given the big case. Personally I have (and prefer) the heavy linear type and if sourcing new would probably advocate a linear. However a great many on this site use and recommend the switch mode style. A linear is particularly the choice if you want to locate the unit indoors and run a long cable out to your mount (10s of metres). The high frequency ripple on a switch mode would generate a bit of RF interference using a long output cable as an antenna, though should be supressed with a decent quality switch mode anyway. Both types seem to give good service.

These should be fine, I use 13.8v for all my gear. I would however recommend some inline fuse protection or build a splitter box with some fuse protected outlets. I use a small ABS box near the mount for my fuses. If you need to drop the voltage (dew heaters) you can get some small circuit boards that do that for you that can fit in a small box, these work fine on 13.8v in with a regulated 12v out.

It was a low apex roof originally but I removed all of it as timbers were rotten , so started from a flat box essentially. What remained were 4 concrete walls to build from.