Carbon Brush

Was the scope bought new? From RVO? If that is the case, are you near enough to drop it into the shop? An experienced eye will either sort the problems, or identify a 'back to maker' fault.

I have seen stars moving among intermittent cloud. And been in train carriages where the platform moves backwards. All without alcohol or mind altering substances🤥 How our brains in correctly process images from our eyes sometimes makes me wonder how we get around without falling over🤣

I don't know this particular scope. However, often these old scopes had a good objective. Performance being let down by poor eyepieces. Mounts were often a bit wobbly - but so are some new mounts in my opinion. A few years ago I converted a Prinz (Dixons brand) 0.965" scope to use 1.25". No real money spent and a good long refractor at the end of the day. As it has cost you nothing (so far) you can spend. You can bodge a modern eyepiece on there using gaffer tape and live with the dodgy focusser. If you can get a good result, you know it is worth the money and effort of upgrade. If nothing else, you have a very good storage case for your refractor purchase🙂 HTH, David.

Orion Optics UK used to supply their 8" & 10" reflectors with a Synta EQ5. I have owned both (a long time back). F4 - 8" and F4.8 - 10". I don't recall them being unstable for visual. I managed a bit of DSLR on the 8". However, if putting a package together today I would reduce the scope, or increase the mount.

The simple (but unhelpful) answer about monitors in the cold is - it depends🤨. The traditional small LCD (used on old handsets) becomes sluggish in the cold. It can also require contrast adjustment to keep viewing. I think it was Meade who many years sold a rectangular heat pad to keep handset screens warm. If you buy a standard 'computer' monitor it will generate heat internally. Maybe 10 to 20 watts. I remember seeing a machine control system being used in a (not very nice factory) that had a standard desk monitor. First thing in the morning you could see ice crystals behind the screen first protective layer. Later this changed to water - but not enough to cause circuit malfunctions. Eventually it dried as the factory warmed. In my observatory I have an old standard monitor. If not used for a while in winter it displays a few spurious columns of active illumination - or dark columns. After an hour or two of use (internal heating) these go away. Normal service is resumed. The big danger comes from bringing any cold electronics into your warm and humid house at the end of a session. There will be lots of condensation inside and out. Remember the days of video tape recorders, the instruction was to wait a good hour before use when going from cold to warm. The danger here was condensation the tape transport preventing the usual sliding and boundary air. Resulting in the mechanism eating tape. HTH, David.

I have used a few of the 'chipboard' type dob mounts. They always benefit from a bit of care. These mounts are made in quantity to a loose spec. With any luck tension adjustment only gives a good enough result. On a used scope, dismantle the base (a couple of spanners) and give it a clean up. Then reassemble with a very little bit of Mr Sheen type spray, or silicon grease, or petroleum jelly. I have been amazed at how much muck can accumulate in there and been pleased with the improvement after cleaning. The milk carton washer mentioned by @john is another good mod.

+1 for the gym matting. I once had a scope (almost 20Kg) slide out of the dovetail onto the wood observatory floor. Being a Russian scope, it did not suffer anything more than paint damage. More a question of whether I needed steel toe caps for observing. But a pack of mats covers the entire observatory floor, ensuring things don't get as hard hit now.

+1 for @Synchronicity comments. The common drive assemblies all use cheapie connectors. No gold other non corrosive plating. No sealed assemblies. Then we let them get damp. When you reassemble, put a bit of silicon grease in the contacts to inhibit further corrosion. You don't have to be neat and tidy. An electrical or food grade grease won't harm plastics. Alternatively petroluem jelly - vaseline. If you use car type greases you risk reaction with plastics in the long term. I regard the corrsion prevention as an 'always do this' process, whether dealing with scope stuff, changing a car bulb, or opening a car electrical connector. HTH, David.

+1 For a dry tube. Fungus won't grow in a dry place. As for UV. Yes in principle. I do though defer to someone knowledgeable for details. Long wavelength reduces risk of damage to rubber/plastic/paint. Short wavelength is more likely to break chemical bonds in fungus - but increases the scope materials risk. We have all seen paint fade, rubber cracking, etc. on non astro kit. Someone somewhere presumably has knowledge of effective time, intensity and wavelength. A furher consideration is temperature. I'm guessing fungal spores are very hardy. Though a growing fungus is not. Maybe a visit to your freezer or a gentle (80C?) oven? Again I defer to someone with more knowledge. Watching with interest.

@elp. Yes a bit of generalisation on my part. I should have said a significant number of people aren't interested in heavy manual lenses. A work colleague is very much into wildlfe photography. Spending huge sums on cameras and lenses. When I told him about my Samyang 135 he was not impressed. No autofcus or auto aperture.🤔 Wildlife and astro are of course very different applications and we can benefit from the 'daylight photo' reject or throw out products.

Astrophotography is a money pit. A suggestion is to put a little money into a very basic tracking mount. EQ with RA drive is not going to cost much on the used market. Grab some pictures and see how good (or bad) your kit lens is going to be. If your pictures are tracking but somewhat off it is the lens. By that I mean rugby ball stars, rather than star trails. If your lens is letting you down, try stopping down and the tracking mount lets you keep on target for the longer exposure. Then look for a 2nd hand lens. Almost anything with a decent name. Something thrown out from a film camera? These are often good and cheap. You can buy adapters to go from M42 or whatever may be on the lens to the Canon fit. Nobody in the daylight photo world wants these old heavy manual lenses. Their loss and your gain. I think that is deep enough into the money pit😄 HTH, David.

The first and most obvious question... What mount is it? I don't recognise it from the photo of the innards. Difficult say from the photo if U8 has a deposit of some sort, that is unimportant. Or if the plastic package has 'leaked its guts' indicating a dead device. A different camera angle, or you scraping the package will sort this. Quite often mounts have identical connectors for both axes, allowing a simple exchange for identifying motor or drive chip faults. Put the working motor on the other drive. A short time connection won't wreck the motor. Do not put the suspect motor on the working drive. You may end up with two faulty drives. HTH, David.

Thank you @Franklin. I learn something new every day on SGL. The fine pitch threads on astro kit can give problems - even when correct. Before assembly you can use a bit of silicone (electrical) grease or petroleum jelly. AKA vaseline - other brands are available and all that. This is helpful a few years down the line if things have corroded, or if the metals 'gall'. How much to use? It only needs be the slightest smear on the thread. With either compound, work on the basis of it being a gold/platinum alloy and you are short of money😄 If you get carried away, there is risk of liquid vaseline in warm times, or blobs of grease falling on to glassware. HTH, David.

My experience has been that cool down time does matter - but how much? If you were to carry your scope/mount/tripod in one lump from from a 23C room to a 0C outside and expect to immediately count Jupiters bands, GRS, etc, yes it matters. Storing the scope in a cooler room, or a shed, or garage, or in a (not recently driven) car will help. In practice we tend to carry things out separately and assemble outside. It takes longer, eating into cool down time. Then of course we tend to look at an 'easy' target, low magnification, to check the scope is all OK, finder aligned, and the sky is as clear as we thought. Finally we get around to viewing something at high magnification. The quickest setup is of course a manual dob. Anything with goto has the levelling and alignment time. HTH, David.

If you tell us a little more about your situation for viewing, we can make more constructive suggestions. For example in the city, can you get away from immediate lighting? Do you have to go down flights of stairs from home to your (garden?) for viewing? What time of year do you go to the dark island? How do you travel? Your car on a ferry? Foot passenger? If you have to go down 3 flights of stairs at home to set up a scope, then you travel as a foot passenger on a ferry, a large reflector scope is not a good choice. Though you will hear (correctly) that a reflector on dobson mount will give you most scope for your money. If your dark island visit is mid summer, you will not get that much dark time. Tell us more and the advice will improve. David.

Attention span 5 minutes is often the case for a young child. Instant results are called for. Nothing too big or heavy for a child to handle. The first 4 scopes in this list are worth thinknig about. https://www.firstlightoptics.com/beginner-telescopes.html

My first 'proper' scope 20 years ago was an 8" reflector, as it happens, on EQ mount. Since then many scopes have come and gone (well more come than gone😄). However, there has always been an 8" or similar size reflector in there somewhere. Provided you don't have a bad back and have to carry the scope down flights of stairs, an 8" dob is a good choice. Forget about photos until you have got a better feel for what you enjoy seeing. You can easily spend a night chasing an image and actually see nothing. HTH, David.

Definitely dig carefully using hand tools. I discovered that British Gas and British Telecom that thoughtfully installed their services about 200mm below my driveway. The digging man folded over the end of the venting gas pipe and retained it using a cable tie😆 Neither organisation seemed to think they should have been deeper, put marker tape above their lines, or even put it on the house plans! They also thought it was OK to install services that shallow!🤬 When digging my pier foundation, I discovered a long forgotten land drain (pipes not joined up type) that was at my target depth.

Yes as @LandyJon says, a pillar extension to your tripod. Alternatively just use a pillar. Pillars with legs seem to have fallen out of favour these days. I have some old pillars - but it is a long way to collect😁 Might be easier to get something fabricated locally.

I have owned a lot of scopes. not as many as Mike. But only have half of Mike's time for 'serious' scope spending. Another difference here is that I have forgotten quite a few. Maybe I ought to start making a list? Now if we add mounts & eyepieces into the lists......

Within a given case size, you do get small differences in claimed capacity between manufacturers. When using these cell types in memory/clock backup it is only for very small current drain. So cell degradation (5-10 years) is almost as import as cell capacity in determining life. Thank you to @malc-c and @geoflewis for your kind comments. Sorry it was a long answer. But sometimes it has to be to provide the explanation. An important note though is when we use these cell types in higher current applications. For example a car remote lock/unlock. The transmitter takes quite a few milliamps (vs microamps or less for memory) so cell low internal resistance is important. Better to avoid the cheap stuff. As the transmitter runs for a fraction of a second, it takes a lot of operations to eat into the cell capacity. Another common failure is that the equipment manufacturer does not give a low battery warning either on the car or the fob. I have a VW fob that I thought was working at reduced range one day. The next day it didn't work. Not the best warning! HTH, David.

Possession is 9/10 of the law. I got my satellites up there first, therefore I own space.

I have been following this thread with interest and was going to offer to solder a replacement - then read @malc-c had made the offer. A bit of background to help others... Catalogue distributors like RS, Farnell don't have particularly good technical support. But they are better than many 'catalogue' distributors. Often the people you contact don't understand 'near enough' or 'almost' or 'similar'. They can only work with exact part numbers. A specialist distributor like Allbateries do understand cells and batteries. They can offer tagging/wiring services and more. But quite honestly an enquiry for one cell it isn't worth picking up the phone. Carriers have varying rules about shipping lithium cells/batteries. As a general rule if it is in a holder in equipment that is OK. But you cannot ship loose. Though some say a blanket NO NO. So you put a cell in a cheap holder and it falls out in transit. No worry! You put a cell in a poly bag surrounded by bubble wrap and that is not allowed. In terms of hazard, coins cells are quite safe unless ingested. You can knock a nail through them to short circuit. In a fire they explode a little. Now cells like those that power your phone or drill are something different. Unfortunately many carriers do not understand and shippers tell lies. I once had a large shipment refused because it contained one coin cell inside equipment. Not long after I saw two HUGE lithium packs (Segway type scooter size) that were not air transport approved. The first was faulty on arrival, the second was a replacement. These were shipped from China to UK, by air freight. When you have seen the stupidy (or lies) from some people trying to ship, you can appreciate why carriers err on the side of caution. The CR series cells have an easy naming convention, used across manufacturers. A CR2032 means it is 20mm diameter and 3.2mm thick. A CR2450 is 24mm dia and 5mm thick. you get the idea. They are all 3V cells it is the capacity (milliamps x hours) that varies. Given these are used at low current to retain a real time clock, or a memory chip, capacity is not that important. OK a big cell lasts 10 years and a small cell only 3. A suffix on the end of the part number is used to denote a tagged version. Tags can be for wires, or PCB pins and can be in different orientations. The suffix is manufacturer dependent. If you buy a tagged cell, you can easily solder on your own wires. You have to be quite clumsy to heat the cell enough to do damage. If you buy an untagged cell, then buy a holder as you need good soldering skills to add a wire without overheating. This leads on to the question of why was the cell in a PCB holder? Or on wire leads? Or soldered on the PCB? It is a decision taken by a manufacturer for several reasons. If a cell is soldered to a PCB, replacement is beyond the skill of a lot of users. Maybe the equipment is going to have a short life so cell replacement is not likely. If a cell is in a PCB holder, there is risk of it popping out if the equipment gets dropped. There is also the question of long term contact tarnishing - a big subject and it happens a lot. However, on a PCB, if the cell leaks for any reason, you can corrode and wreck the PCB. If a cell is on wires, the equipment manufacturer can place the cell out of harms way should it leak. The plastic sleeve can retain the spill. Replacing a cell on the wire + plug is an easy unplug, not desolder. If you can't buy the exact cell locally, then anything near enough with tags and solder/sleeve yourself, keeping the old plug/lead is an easy repair. HTH, David.

Taking a slightly different look at this..... When you buy anything delicate and it is shipped, it has to be wrapped/packaged in a certain way. Actually it has meet certain specific conditions. When the outer box/crate/whatever is dropped onto a hard surface, it experiences a rapid decelaration. Newton tells us that rapid deceleration means large forces. If you think of parcel abusing companies dropping things 1 or even 2 metres onto a concrete floor, that is reasonable. Your box may be solid wood, and survive all but unscathed. It may be cardboard and have a dented corner. The important thing is what happens inside the box. If the object is wrapped in multiple layers of bubble wrap, it compresses the bubbles on impact, and returns to original shape. In other words the object experiences low forces and survives undamaged. Considering a scope fixed into polystyrene (or similar) rings and blocks. Again the polystyrene deforms and recovers shape. Protecting the scope. Scope manufacturers know they have to get their stuff from factory gate to end user. Encountering shipping containers, parcel dropping companies, etc on the way. They know how to choose packing materials. Now to stupid packing. Something that can happen when buying used equipment. Put the scope in the middle of a box of polystyrene chippings. Yes while the truck is bouncing over cobbles, it works its way to the bottom, negating protection. Then you pack a scope and accessory separately with minimal packing between. On a drop/impact they come into contact and you get paint damage or worse. I would have no worries about buying an expensive scope from a reputable supplier and having it shipped. Now if it was an ebay/Amazon bargain not in original boxes, or repacked......... HTH, David.

There are already reports of ISS crews getting into capsules 'just in case' and satellites using their limited fuel to avoid near misses. The basic problem is that majority of high orbiting stuff (that hangs about for a long time) is put there by countries who don't get on with each other. It doesn't take a great deal of imagination to think of the leader of country A lamenting the loss of a manned craft after impact with something left by country B. It wasn't our fault - the other lot left their junk up there. Just how many satellites can fit into (the limited space) geostationary orbit before they start nudging each other? Very sad.