Dr Strange

Welcome Nick!

As noted above, KSTARS will work on a Mac. In addition Nebulosity (the same person who made PhD makes Nebulosity) will also work on the Mac. 

Correct. You would polar align (PA) using the polar scope, align the mount, then goto the target, open PHD2 and select a guide star. 

A word of caution. You are jumping in to the very deepest end of the pool with a weight belt on and one hand tied behind your back. Even though you have a background in terrestrial photography astro photography (AP) is completely different, very complex, and can be very frustrating. So be prepared for that. 

It will work under Paralles. You access it via that USB port on the hand controller going into the computer. You setup ASCOM first then connect to the mount with PHD via ASCOM driver. 

7 hours ago, Beardy30 said:

EP wise would you go for a 12mm or 18mm - the celestron x -Cel LX have been recommended to me 

Were it me, I wouldn't. I would go for the Explore Scientific 14mm 82 degree EP. But if you are wanting to stick with Celestron then the 12mm will serve you better. The 18mm is going to be too close to the 25mm Plossl you have now. 

Having worked with the StarSense... For alignment, absolutely! Turns the mount and scope into a robot. Does everything automatically for you. I used it most recently for outreach since I could be in a lit up parking lot and it would still align. If good alignment is a challenge I would recommend it.  For the Tour function, not as much. I don't know if they have updated this but when I used it the tour made you go sequentially through the list. You couldn't skip. And that was frustrating since there were objects I knew I couldn't see that it wouldn't let me skip. 

Having said that, for less than the price of the StarSense (£237 at FLO) another option would be to invest in a RACI (Right Angle Correct Image meaning the image is right side up and not reversed like you get with a mirror diagonal and telescope) finderscope, a Telrad, a copy of Sky and Telescope's Pocket Sky Atlas, and a 12mm illuminated Reticle eyepiece. This will set you back £165. Note both prices do not include VAT. And over time you will find you can align the scope faster than the StarSense. 

One thing to remember with the alignment of your scope, always make the last movements for alignment in the eyepiece up and to the right. That means the star should go upwards and to the right for alignment. This will remove any backlash in the gears. And that 12mm Reticle EP really helps with accurate alignment. 

Try the Tour option then. It is in the HC and it will be a more meaningful experience. You just select it from the menu then goto the object listed. Well worth trying. 

Thank you! That is slick!

Wow! I am sorry to hear that! I would also engage the police since the kit he left behind may be returnable to someone(s) and as noted they may be able to lift prints. An alternative to putting the laptop out there would be to invest in a very inexpensive Raspberry Pi or stick computer for mount side with a laptop inside to control everything...

Sorry forgot to add one thing. You may want to view the moon at its various phases before you open/order that polarizing filter. If you are like me, you will not want to dim and/or distort the shades of grey and white the moon looks when you use a filter like that. I would rather go moon blind (temporary blindness from a white spot in the eye from the brightness of a almost full or full moon) than face that. So I just suck it up and deal with the moon blindness for a few moments. 

Nice report!

A good tool for planning observing sessions is: https://www.tonightssky.com/MainPage.php I use it to plan things out for the evening. I download the report as a .csv file then pull it into Excel and sort it by Constellation then object type. I do that because it keeps my scope/mount from going all over hell and creation thus saving some battery drain as well as me moving my chair over and over. I delete the Cat. 2, RA, Dec, Size/Sep columns and shorten the common names then put the page layout in landscape so I can fit things on as few printed pages as possible. In your hand controller (HC) there are options for NGC, SAO, Messier objects so you would use one of those based on the Cat 1 column names. NGC is usually for pretty much everything we look at so you would work primarily from there. SAO is for double stars and single stars which is a more specialized area. Messier are the 110 brightest objects found by Charles Messier and are also a good place to start. 

A nice feature in the Celestron HC is the Tour option in the HC. It automatically picks the best objects in the sky based on your location and goes to them. Unfortunately it doesn't take into account your local light pollution or what filters you may or may not be using so things may show up that you can't actually see. Things like certain nebulae and the like. 

Louis is right. At that focal length pushing power isn't always the best option. Having owned the 8SE myself I found that the Explore Scientific (ES) eyepieces (EP's) are going to give you the most bang for your buck. And will work with any scope you may upgrade to or add to your lineup. For the 8SE I would recommend the ES 14mm 82* EP. It is going to make you move your entire head to see the barrel of the EP which is nice because it makes you feel like you fell into the telescope and are swimming in space. It is £138 so it is not cheap but in this hobby as with anything else you get what you pay for. I had the entire line of the 82*'s by the way except for the 30mm. At 24mm it is like the Holy Hand Grenade in size, and can be used in place of a club to defend yourself so for me it too was a bit big. My most used of them were the 18mm (you will need a 2" diagonal for this) and the 14mm. I compared the ES EP's to the Tele Vue Naglers and the ES held their own.

The only reason I have the Naglers now and sold the ES's was because here in the US vendors will sell the Tele Vue EP's at dealer cost at certain times of the year. They do this because Tele Vue incentivizes dealers with free product if they sell certain target numbers of EP's and other equipment. So for a dealer if they hit a certain number of EP's sold they get free products that is worth more to them than the profit they would have made on the EP's they sold at dealer cost. Since that was a deal too good to pass up I sold my ES EP's and bought Tele Vue. Had that deal not been on the table I would still be using the ES's. 

FLO is a great place to buy the EP's. Even though I am in the States I use them when I can't find something over here or they have something I need. They are fantastic to work with and very knowledgeable plus they are price competitive so you can't go wrong. Here is a link to the EP:

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/explore-scientific-eyepieces/explore-scientific-82-degree-series-eyepieces.html

Something very helpful in finding Polaris is called Kochab's Clock. Here is a link to it with explanation:

http://arksky.org/Kochab.htm

I use it myself. Once you get the hang of it, it works pretty well. 

This will help you determine what your light pollution is. Just zoom in on Lincolnshire.

https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/#zoom=4&lat=5759860&lon=1619364&layers=B0FFFFFTFFFFFFFF

I should add that I am in a Bortle 7/8 aka Red/While light polluted sky in Los Angeles. I can see galaxies with my 120-130mm APO and 203mm Mewlon 210 (better in the 210) but they are very very faint and as I noted before puffs of smoke or smudges. So with a 120mm refractor (the Skywatcher Evostar from FLO for £269 is a great all around refractor for planetary, moon, and many many DSO from a city sky) it is entirely possible to bag galaxies from the city. And when you start pushing into the 200mm reflector range things tend to open up. Thus why I recommended the Skywatcher Dob. 

However to give you an idea of how much things improve even going from a Bortle 7 to a Bortle 5/6, one of the best views of M81 and M51 respectively I have ever had was from the aforementioned. For 81 I was at a park about an hour from my house. I was at 263 meters above sea level. It looked like one of the AP photos people take! Stunning! I saw M51 with my 120mm APO from Big Bear lake which was just over 90 minutes from my house. Elevation here was 2 km above sea level. Again it looked like a photo! Dust lanes and all!

Galaxies are low surface brightness objects so they are not bright or very easily found by star hopping unless you are experienced at doing so. At best from light polluted skies they are going to look like a faint puff of smoke or a smudge. In your bino's a very small puff of smoke or smudge. Still fun to get since you are looking at another galaxy that is anywhere from 2 million to, in the case of M81/82, about 11 million light years away. A good book to get for star hopping in general would by Sky and Telescope's Pocket Sky Atlas. It has deep space objects (DSO) broken out by season and shows the star patterns around it for star hopping.

If you want to look into a telescope to supplement your bino's a good one is the Skywatcher 203mm Dobsonian. That is a huge aperture increase and galaxies will still be a smudge or puff of smoke but will be brighter and subjectively bigger. It is also relatively affordable and paired with a Telrad and the Pocket Sky Atlas a good setup to learn to star hop and to see things. 

As an addition to my post I would add the caveat that it will also depend on your visual observing interests. For example I do not image with my TSA-120. Getting it to the point where I can is very cost prohibitive. Takahashi has a bunch of adapters you need that are almost at the level of a sexual fetish and very costly to get the scope there. In addition the focal reducer for the scope is over $1,000 US. 

I use a Tele Vue NP101is. The adapters and extenders I needed cost me $140 US as opposed to over $500 US for the Tak ones and I don't need the $1,100 focal reducer. In effect to get the TSA to where I wanted it I would be spending over half the cost of a used NP101is in the US which is about $2,800. The NP101is was the better choice. No fiddling with adapters and extenders. No fiddling with focal reducers.  The NP101is is a Petzval design at a significantly lower cost than the Takahashi option which in the same aperture is the FSQ-106 which costs $6,000 US and goes for about $3,500-$4,000 US used. It is f/5.3 has a smaller image circle than the FSQ BUT that isn't important to me since I do primarily NB instead of large sensor  LRGB work and when I want to do really big things I am fine doing a mosaic. And lastly it is lighter than the FSQ which is easier on the mount.

I digress. My apologies.

The NP101is is an amazing wide field visual scope as well. I can get the entire Veil complex in it using a 31 Nagler EP. And with a OIII filter that view is amazing. It also does remarkably well on open clusters. Really framing things nicely as well as being able to take in even the largest of them. So if your visual thing is wide field then an AP oriented scope will work well for you. 

Astro Devices in Australia has kits for many of the popular Dobsonians and what Serge (the owner) doesn't have he can likely make for you. He is wonderful to work with a provides fantastic support. I literally have posted an email to him asking a technical question and have had him call me within the hour to discuss it live! And that has happened multiple times. I use his Nexus DSC system and recently installed his 311k encoder kit on my DM6. A link to the website is: https://www.astrodevices.com If you want the whole stand alone kit and caboodle then the Nexus DSC with an encoder kit is the way to go. Not cheap but a great system. If you want to use your smartphone as the brains then the Nexus II and encoders is the path to take.

I like your avatar! I am a Manchester United fan myself. Likely it was M42 the Orion Nebula. 

4 hours ago, merlin100 said:

Okay, let me phrase the question a different way then...   What makes one refractor good for visual observing and another good for astrophotography?

Visually if you are not bothered by CA (Chromatic Aberration aka the blue and/or yellow fringe around bright objects) then an Achromatic refractor works fine. And there are slower (higher f/stop) Achro's out there that minimize the CA. The Skywatcher Evostar 120 comes to mind as an example. Also more aperture is better for visual so a bigger heavier refractor that has more aperture is better for visual. For AP the quality of the glass, the mating and figuring of that glass, the focusing of the three bands of light (red, green, blue) on a single focal point (Apochromatic or Apo) as opposed to what you get with an Achro where only two of the three are focused on one point the flatness of the field, and the quality of mechanical parts are important. Aperture is not necessarily important. More aperture means more weight which means a bigger more expensive mount. 

There are good compromises that work well for AP and visual with some constraints. The visual end will not be as good on small targets like planetary nebulae or globular clusters but they are still visible and enjoyable to look at. On the AP end it means a bigger mount to hold the scope and still do well for AP. For example my Takahashi TSA-120 does well for both.

Visual and AP (Astro Photography) are two different disciplines within the hobby with two different requirements in terms of equipment. In the case of visual quality aperture is important because the bigger the size the brighter the object which translates to the more you can see. With AP it is first the mount, then the telescope, then the camera. And for a beginner it is better to start with a small short focal length refractor because it is more forgiving and easier to work with. AP is a very complex part of the hobby. Furthermore it is better for someone just starting out to start with visual, do that for about 9 months+ of just visual so that you can learn your equipment as well as the night sky. This makes the eventual transition to AP easier because you have taken the time to get familiar with the aforementioned before going deep into the complexity of AP.

In addition unfortunately with your budget it will be very hard to meet the requirements that you are asking for. And it is really not recommended to try and do AP and visual with the same scope. It can be done and people have been successful doing it but it can be very frustrating and the learning curve, which is already steep for AP becomes more so. 

That said a lower cost compromise that would fit your budget and do what you want to do option would be the Skywatcher AZ-GTi with the 127mm Mak for visual at £445 with the addition of the EQ (Equatorial) wedge and a 70ish mm refractor and a ASI CCD. This site's sponsor is an excellent resource for equipment and their professional staff is very knowledgeable and helpful. So much so that even though I am in the US I still order from them. I can't find the wedge on their site but I am sure they can help with it. A good refractor option would be the Skywatcher Evostar 72ED DS Pro for £269. A good CCD to work with would be the ZWO ASI 385MC for £333. Eyepieces (EP) for that scope do not have to be top shelf but you want something decent. The Explore Scientific 68 degree EP's work very well, are high quality, and are not expensive for what you get. For the Mak I would suggest the 28mm and 16mm and the 62 degree 9mm EP. That will cost you £164, £116 and £76 respectively. That will also give you a good range of magnifications to start with. 

As noted true north. Best to use Polaris if you can see it as your alignment star in your polar scope. You can find Polaris via Kochab's Clock: http://arksky.org/Kochab.htm Many people think Polaris is a very bright star. It isn't. But Kochab's Clock will point you right to it.

22 hours ago, jetstream said:

I'm curious why my AZ EQ6 needs to be leveled with the bubble with Synscan but my Sky Commander DSC could care less about being level? the SC can be accurate to 1/10 deg with 10,000 step encoders. I can easily get .25 deg in use with the 24" dob.

It helps with the alignment a bit if the mount is level with the earth. Though I found that to be not quite the case with my AZ-EQ6. I didn't have to be spot on level in alt/az mode. The calculations it makes based on the alignment stars didn't seem to take level into too much account. But I used the mount only for visual in alt/az save for one time in EQ mode to image the blood moon. 

The fight against boredom is a tough one. It happens to the best of us. But there are ways to combat it. One is to realize that things change by season bringing new kinds of objects into view. Another is to go after different and harder to see types of targets. Yet another is to participate in various challenges and observing programs. Working towards completion of the ones that are out there can last a lifetime. And yet another is to do Electronically Assisted Astronomy (EAA) where you use a camera or (more recently) a Night Vision Device (NVD) to enhance your viewing experience. It is a hybrid between AP and visual and from light polluted skies can be very rewarding. Lastly is the AP end of things. AP is very complex and that means quite a bit of time to master it. Then there are the targets to go after. 

That scope is a very good all around one. Even though it is an Achro it is f/8 (IIRC) and at that f/stop and focal length only the very brightest of objects will show the yellow or purple fringe of Chromatic Aberration (CA). It is a great starting scope as well. It will show you all kinds of things out there. 

The mount is not going to work for astro photography (AP). It is manual. For that the AZ-EQ5 is a good choice. It will do visual work in alt/az mode which means the eyepiece (EP) will not be put in potentially awkward positions like an equatorial (EQ) mount can. For AP it converts to EQ mode which is what you need. It is quite a bit more expensive but a good entry level mount that will get you going in AP. 

Unfortunately AP is a time, frustration, and money sink. There have been many nights I have spent alternately cursing and making rude hand gestures at my equipment and pleading with it to work right. Prepare yourself for that. It can also mean spending crazy amounts of money on equipment. Prepare yourself for that too. 

Also understand that AP and visual are two different things with two different sets of equipment. For visual good quality aperture is important. With the caveat that you don't go so big in terms of aperture that it is now a chore to take out and you start looking for excuses not to take it out after the initial "newness" wears off. For AP it is quality of the mount, quality of the telescope, and quality of the camera that makes the difference. Aperture is actually a very distant second to all of those. For someone just starting out the Skywatcher refractor you list or a 152-203mm Dobsonian, or a 152-203mm SCT is the best option.