DaveL59

Glad you got it sorted 🙂 If you do find the focuser slips with an eyepiece (esp if you go buy new heavier ones) then you can adjust the tension with the 2 screws on the plate circled in green You can also slacken if they are currently too tight and causing the focuser to be hard to turn. The metal spring plate behind that U bracket is what those screws are acting against to determine the tension. If you find the drawtube rocks to/fro you can improve this also with either a thin felt tape or teflon tape as used in heat sealing on commercial production lines like this one PTFE Teflon Tape Self Adhesive High Temperature + 260 ℃ Low Friction for Vacuum Hand and Impulse Sealers 13mm x 10m 2 Rolls : Amazon.co.uk: DIY & Tools You'd need to withdraw the drawtube completely, remove any grease on the inside of the focuser body and then apply the tape to close up the gap and reduce free play. Best to apply 2 strips opposite the rack/pinion say 30-40 degrees either side of centre.

oh to have skies like that!

oh, worth saying but do be careful when plugging things together and also about power supply. You want 12v and 2A or better but not more than 15v in any case. I use a 12v 5A power brick or a LiPo car starter battery that I connect via a 12v 5A buck converter to trim the non-load voltage which on the starter can be 16v.

I don't believe so, you buy one already assembled at factory or one without and add the Skywatcher add-on kit and get the same result. The kit comes with the cowling to cover the motor gear on the RA axis which replaces the square box that's on it for non-goto mounts. The kit is simply an upgrade from non to goto for those that want to add it later 🙂

yeah, I bought a EQ5 with the goto addon a couple years back and found when I got it home and had a play that it'd grate the gears when slewing. Of course being new to it all it took me a bit to figure it all out. Both axes have a lot of stiffness on that EQ5 head but luckily I had another EQ5 that came with the TAL100RS and that was smooth. So I simply swapped the goto kit over and its been fine since. Gonna be overhauling that sticky EQ5 soon tho as I've now added a basic dual motor kit to it so I'll want to have it running smooth to ease the loading on the motors. Having a play in daylight is worth doing tho, you get to learn how to operate it while you can actually see what you and the mount are doing. It is quite loud when slewing (well mine is) which isn't so great with close neighbours but at least you only do that occasionally when heading to a new target 😉

I'd check that the axes are able to rotate freely with no points of resistance, also get the GoTo hooked up and test that it functions well. You can do this in the daytime by selecting objects that you know should be up in the sky. No need to have a scope attached for this and when doing an alignment routine just do an up and right then enter to confirm each goto to allow the mount to complete the alignment process. Then you can elect a target and see how smoothly the mount operates in panning onto it. You're not looking for accuracy here, just function and noise etc. Grating gears during a fast pan would indicate that they either aren't meshed well (might be adjustable if the gears are ok) or bearings in the axis being reluctant to rotate. A sniff of the electronic components doesn't hurt, any burnt smells then be careful 😉

I'd agree with this, currently I use GBe capable TPlink units (AV1000/1200 IIRC) that use MIMO to improve transmission. These shunt the network around from upstairs down to the main switch & router carrying CCTV traffic and it works very well and I'm passing trunked/tagged vLANs over them too. Tho not ideal you can cross between circuits/rings so long as they are the same side of the MCB. If there's a shortage of outlets in the shed then you can get pass-thru units and piggyback the current mains feed that way.

Nice shot. Found on my Sammy 24-inch curved monitor turning eye-saver mode off brought it up. The cheaper Acer TFT showed it right away

That can indeed help, as will fixing the WiFi to specific channels that are less used from what the scan report shows. Note tho that android phones can do this easily with Inssider, WiFi Analyser etc, but the fruity ones not. Unfortunately you can't push the range as easily, WiFi-Max aerials may help, or not. The further from the AP the lower the signal strength and the slower the connection with probably more dropouts too. Same applies if there's too many connected devices, contention for the aggregate bandwidth will result in the connection being slower for all.

ahh much earlier for me, left there in 1978, a lifetime ago now for sure 😄

wow, I was in Northfleet in my later childhood, Pepper Hill then Colyer Road, went to Gravesend School for Boys before leaving for London and college. Now a bit further down the M2 after living in NW and SE London then Thurrock, Essex. Barely recognised Gravesend high street when I was down that way a few years ago tho.

The SM-A526... is the makers full designation for the phone, you should see that come up when you power it up or in settings -> about phone under model number. There's a number of sub-models depending on the market they were sold into which determine specifics around firmware, radio frequencies, supported carriers etc. My phone, Galaxy Note 10+ 5G is also known as the SM-N976B for example. Does look as it it may be supported then, I wonder if you make changes to the camera settings (pro mode etc) if that'd affect how Starsense can access/control it?

well I guess if you could travel faster than light by a big enough factor then you could 'look back' as it were, at least back at where you came from and the light that was now catching up to you... be a bit like looking at a photo taken of yourself 20-30 years ago tho, you'd know it was you but from an earlier time.

As @wulfrun said, a distant object is at the same time as we are, but what we see when we look at it is the light emitted from it 'n' years ago since it has taken that amount of time to reach us. In the same way when/if they look toward us they will see light that we emitted 'n' years ago so we would each in the current present time see each other as we were 'n' years ago. Maybe that's why nobody has so far bothered to come see us, they have the impression we are still at the neanderthal or dark ages stage so not worth the effort 😉

in theory it may work but as they've not tested then its pot luck unfortunately. Could be down to the camera installed or some other feature that's not present in the model you used. Worth pinging Celestron support tho to see if they can advise and maybe get it added to their supported list, maybe with the next update.

I may be misreading the pic but is it possible that the inner drawtube had been cranked in way too far and is now past the point where the pinion drive can pick it up. Indicated in red is what I'm seeing from your pic If that is the drawtube then you might be able to encourage it up the focuser tube and gently turn the focuser wheel to get it back to the top. How it could have found its way that far tho is another issue as I thought there was a stop to prevent this happening. If that's broken away then you may want to obtain a replacement in any case.

Doesn't seem to be listed in the supported phones but your A40 is. StarSense Explorer Smartphone Compatibility (simcur.com) I tried to be cute and loaded a newer android onto my old Note-3 and while the phone worked fine the starsense app didn't like it, no camera image being one of the effects. I assume you are running the regular Sammy OS release rather than running a mod'd one from XDA or elsewhere and I'd expect the Celestron app will only have been verified against the OEM OS release so it probably ain't worth doing otherwise. PS: ya did remove the big black cover off the cradle? 😉

that could work but if you expect a high data usage could be quite expensive to run depending on the data tariffs offered. Also while you might from the MiFi/mobile internet be able to VPN tunnel back into your main home LAN, that will depend on what your main router can support, not all can/do. You're unlikely to be able to VPN connect into your MiFi since mobile operators rarely give you a public IP on these devices tho you might find one who will, for a price. That's an issue I have when my router flips over to the mobile 4G connection if the main fiber line drops.

WiFi is unfortunately one of those things so many think will just work but for a lot of things its far from the ideal solution. In the industry we tend toward the view that if its fixed location then it should be wired if you expect it to be reliable. Walls can drastically effect coverage and signal strength as can any other active devices around that use that same signal band, for 2.4GHz that includes DECT phones etc. If you can fit external aerials then consider WiFi-MAX externals that you can then use directionally to improve the connection between router and remote end. You'd likely want a WiFi extender to fit that onto tho else the main router won't be a lot of use for supporting the rest of the household etc.

I kinda agree in that when looking at the planets, at least the more easily observed ones I'd rather use eyeball MK1 tbh, but the deeper space stuff I can easily see the appeal of one of these. Simple setup and it just works giving a nice image that for many will meet their expectations vs a fuzzy grey thing in an optical eyepiece. I for one don't want a big dob nor a huge unwieldy scope and expensive mount etc., nor can I build an obsy here in a rented place. I may have a play with the Sony DSLR on the back of the TAL100RS some day or using one of the M42 lenses I have. But when I consider the extent many here have gone to with high end camera and other gear, that's way out of budget for me both in terms of costs and the time needed, so I'm almost tempted to go check out that one not far from me... but first up, start a new job and earn some disposable, maybe change the car, etc etc...

wow that's neat, so an RDF with a mirror to save having to crank your neck to look thru it, I take it? That has me thinking if I can lob a spare prism onto one of mine to make it more useful (well, easier to use lol)...

Hi and welcome to the forums. Sounds like a nice collection of scopes and a maybe curio from the loft too in your other post.

other than it's an old Japan made 4-inch (100mm) reflector branded Telstar on an equatorial mount, what are you looking to know? There's no apparent makers markings like circle-V or T or Z so hard to say who actually made it. You might be able to get a suitable replacement secondary if you measure it and search various suppliers or even someone on here may have a suitable spare, they're just a flat mirror after all. Not sure it'd be able to take modern 1.25 inch eyepieces in that focuser but you might manage that with an adaptor and shifting the mirror up the tube to compensate for the displacement of the eyepiece. Are you thinking to restore it or sell it on?

Didn't think the one Ags got was erecting but a regular prism? The erecting one that came with the LT70 starsense was awful and a round plastic body rather than a prism shaped metal one with prism clamp set screws in the sides. edit: ah looking at the FLO listing ok, erects but L-R reversed, fair enough

never used or tried them but found this on a web search, 1mm thickness and varying width available. Adhesive Backed Black Felt Tape -10 metre coils (britishfelt.com)