DaveL59

4 minutes ago, ONIKKINEN said:

Well all right then. Looks like ill need a 16'' dob then 🤣

only 16", I'd have thought 16 ft 😉 

huh? is that it?

is that a bit of coma at the bottom left there?

I use a Giottos monopod for my bins but they are regular 10x50's or so, not the larger celestron or other 15-20x versions. It also has 3 screw in feet for the end plug if needed but ease of use I don't fit them. It can also be used more easily when seated as you aren't trying to fit between 2 legs to reach the binos.

I do have an older Velbon tripod where you can tilt the column over, never tried that with bino's mounted, would likely need to put a counterweight on the bottom of the column tho

wonders if the image is corrupted and they're figuring how to fettle it or break the news to us all

1 minute ago, tomato said:

And what’s with the jaunty muzak?

my neighbour is likely wondering why there's a pounding against their wall from the sub on this PC 😄 

meantime for our amusement...

well if MLQ's internet issues are affecting the wider US then maybe they're having some download issues getting that huge image transferred over...

ack, I half expected when I clicked play that a little green man would leap out of the screen waving his ray gun about AKA Mars Attacks 😉 

Gotta agree with you tho Stu, tiredness does impact severely. I'm finding these days if I've had to spend a lot of time reading or doing a lot of on-line detail work (forms, coding, learning etc) then by evening my eyes are pretty much shot for wanting to be looking down an eyepiece late at night. Feeling it this evening after spending the last 2 hours filling a form out and I'm only halfway through that one. Taking a break to eat and will go back to that form tomorrow now I think, not that looking at the skies is likely here given the current sky views

The moon is so low at the moment that it's barely up for any useful time before it ducks behind that oak and that's end of opportunity for me. Hmm looks like those skycam domes could do with a cleaning too lol

40 minutes ago, Andrew G said:

Moving away  a little as well, has anybody got experience with zoom eyepieces I've saw them just the question is would they work on this?

Depending on which one, you certainly won't want to use one of the larger heavy ones as the focuser may struggle not to mention the little short tube will go right out of balance and want to go nose down all by itself. Then when trying to zoom you've the issue to keep the OTA stable or having to re-find the target.

I have a similar one, the Nat Geo 76/350 which after some fiddling with the focuser and flocking the tube is passable. But as Louis says aiming them is awkward even with an RDF fitted. The alt & az movements aren't that slick either which makes tracking an object that much harder too. Not sure how adjustable the primary mirror is on yours but for the NatGeo there's no real scope to adjust that for collimation so there's a limit as to how well aligned you can get the optics on these too. I picked mine up for a tenner locally so as something to fiddle with and perhaps the grandkids to try out it wasn't much of a risk purchase 🙂 

For eyepieces, not really worth going much beyond a reasonable plossl, 20/25 and down to 10mm or perhaps 6mm I think. I do have an SVBony 7-21mm but never used it in this scope as adjusting the zoom would just be too fiddly with re-aiming etc IMHO.

ahh so a satellite built in Wales should be in the launch later this year:

Space: First Welsh satellite set to be launched later in 2022 - BBC News

wonder how they'll handle the heat of re-entry on their later reusable satellites?

glad to hear its working well now, in terms of the sky cloud and moon can hamper things for sure tho with the moon it'll usually suggest trying another part of the sky. So long as there's enough clear sky with brighter stars I've found it'll figure it out ok.

Advanced camera controls does seem confusing at first, esp in daylight where you can often get just a white screen till you turn down the gain.

Once you've enabled night mode tho the screen goes red so doesn't much affect your vision, the exiting the app does give you back the regular colour display which of course would do. The thing I find most annoying is the loud chime when you exit, not great late at night with neighbours all having windows open in these hot days, but then I get to be woken by crying babies and barking dogs so one loud bing ain't all that much to me 😉 

10 minutes ago, Stu said:

🤣🤣 will place an order 😉

we look forward to reading your review 😉 

2 minutes ago, bosun21 said:

The Starsense app has nothing to do with phones operating system. It’s simply using the phones accelerometer and magnetometer etc, therefore updates will have no affect on it 

perhaps, in theory, but it seems some may have experienced this but I can't verify since mine's been fine. If someone has had this happen it'd be useful to know and if/how they got around it - a reinstall of the app may well fix it, don't know

1 hour ago, PeterStudz said:

I have a sheet of aluminium, an aluminium block, four pillow bearings, a steel shaft and a flexible coupling. 

building a dob-toppler I'd guess? 😉 

1 hour ago, Second Time Around said:

One point to bear in mind is that some phones change as to whether they work or not after an update, especially to the operating system.

that could well be the case, tho so far after several updates my Note-10 has soldiered on. I guess there's always the rooted/not and jailbroke or not issue but we can only go so far. I'm assuming OS are delivered and not rooted/jailbreak'd for the purposes of this poll.

I have noticed tho that the droid version my note runs will often pop up a notification about unused apps and removing permissions. That'd maybe stop the starsense app working if it no longer had camera and other permissions.

@mods Not sure if you feel this is worth being made a sticky ?

56 minutes ago, paulastro said:

Thanks Dave, not yet.

Do you know I'd actually thought of starting a thread regarding phones that work well and those that don't.  I  may do it in the next couple of days.  Thinking about it, I'm spending so much time communicating with both FLO and Celestron Id be delighted if someone else is willing to do it, Dave? 🙂

It's also been suggested to me already that an iPhone  (6,7 or8) might be a better bet and I'm thinking of buying a used one if I'm not very soon up and running with what I have.  In fact my wife has come up with a 5 ES today which I'm going to try when a charger arrives from Amazon and I can work out how it works. (Apparantly it's a 6 in disguise 😊)

 

ok, kicked off a poll so we might get some consensus on what really has been found to work 🙂 

With a number of folks having issues with the app on their phone I thought a poll might help those considering buying one of these starsense phone-based scopes. So please indicate which phone you are successfully using with the starsense app, let me know (or post to this thread) if there's others that I've not added to the list and I'll see if it can be added as we go.

I'm assuming we're only trying those from the supported list and I've generic'd the list a bit as I don't really want to reproduce Cenestron's entire list which is available online here:

StarSense Explorer Smartphone Compatibility (simcur.com)

For myself, I'm using a Galaxy Note 10+ with no issues on either Alt-AZ or EQ mounted scopes.

If poss also post into the thread which actual model you're using to help others along, thanks 🙂 

8 minutes ago, paulastro said:

Thanks Dave.  I'd thought about this but I don't think it is picking up the starfield ok.  In the few attempts I've managed (due to the weather) its never managed to find it's stellar location.  After a number of attempts it takes a couple of long exposures, (8 seconds at 1600 asa if I recall correctly) and they don't work either.  It them comes up with along message saying it has failed to find it's location and I should contact Celestron. 

In all attempts I aligned the camera to the mirror and the view to that of the scope via the crosshairs in the daytime.

After a week communicating with FLO I had my first communication directly from Celestron yesterday.

All this is with the A52s, more or less the same thing happened in my one attempt with me A40.  Its hard to believe it doesn't work witho ne of the cameras, never mind both?!

Forecast clear all night tonight so I'll be out again.  Not very optimistic, if it hasn't worked up to now I can't think why it should be different.

 

 

  

fingers crossed then esp now you've been able to get the camera to show an image in the app. Did they ask you to capture any logs or anything to assist with diagnostics? Might be worth doing anyway so you can take a look and see what it reports.

I wonder what spread of phones we have out in the wild and how they're fairing. I'd expect the premium end (iPhone, Sammy S and Note ranges) to work well as they'll have the better spec hardware and sensors, the mid-lower end (Sammy A etc) not sure, perhaps those that have the licensed app can post results? Or we set up a poll maybe? (no idea how we do that tho)

Just now, bosun21 said:

LT70 is the smallest I could find to buy in order to cannibalize the starsense unit from.

yeah, think the next/equal cheapest was the reflector that was a bird-jones model. 

4 minutes ago, Astro_Dad said:

This is an interesting question - I’ve seen “patent pending”  and more recently “StarSense Explorer technology is patented” on their website.

Typically a patent would be granted post filing (patent application), and the pending refers to the not yet granted phase!

 

ahh but it perhaps was applied for but wasn't yet granted on the earlier manufacturing runs so they wouldn't be able to cite the patent number and couldn't claim that it was yet.

22 hours ago, paulastro said:

Thanks Andrew.  No, it was sunny all day, and then clouded up before it was dark enough to try it out.  Will try again as soon as there's a chance and report back.  I can't try both phones on the same night as they require to be aligned with the telescope beforehand of course in daytime.

No reason you can't alight at night on a bright object you know or even a distant street lamp, or just tell the app its still aligned and go from there just to see if its picking up the star field ok 🙂 

6 minutes ago, Sunshine said:

Under the module, does that mean it’s not yet an approved patent? I’m not familiar with the process.

says same under the NexYZ eyepiece phone holder which this mount is based on. There's no 'about' in the app to give any clues about author/patents/copyright etc that I can see.