gary756

Hi, thankyou for the welcome. Been out again this afternoon and pleased to say it was a doddle to find. Just need to be a bit quicker programming my alignment stuff. It doesnt half motor across the sky! JOC thanks for the tips, am knocking up shield thing as both the boy and I almost melted under my hoody. Will probably try and add somthing to that to help. Looking forward tonight as fingers crossed it's looking clear.

Hi, Really new to all this. Bought my son a travel scope a couple of years ago and it's safe to say we are both hooked. We decided to upgrade our equipment a little while ago. After some advice from this forum and our local astronomy club, we took the plunge on an evolution 6. It arrived early this month on the very day it got cloudy, and its pretty much stayed that way since. Frustrated I thought a solar filter might be fun. Big bright yellow thing how hard can it be? Well how wrong was I, it arrived yesterday. Could I find the sun? In a word no. Did i almost blind myself? Well after my genius idea of using the reflection on the front of the filter. Probably almost!! Annoyed and frustrated after all it's a huge, bright, yellow ball of fire, it shouldn't be that hard to find, right!! Decided to look for advice on forum last night and found some really good stuff about using the shadow of the telescope. Gave it a whirl today and after a good 45 minutes and just on the point where I was ready to use the filter as a frisbee. There it was, so have a good couple of hours this afternoon with the boy looking at the sun. One very happy boy and one chuffed Dad, thankyou.

My bad I realise some of the bits have been about for while, I'm sort of put off the goto scopes as accuracy appears to be a problem for some. Plus I've sort of been half shopping for new scope for a while and the controllers look a bit busy. Hence why I was drawn to the wifi and phone app combination initially. I like the idea for a manual mount with app support and on the plus side it looks really simple. ATM we are basically just having our best guess with an Ipad at what we are looking at. The boy is really interested in astronomy and science in general, even more so since we bought our original travel scope 2 years ago, (Given the chance he'd be out every night regardless of the weather). I'm just conscious that before I know it I could have blown the best part of £500. So it really needs to be a longish term investment, I don't want to find myself in 6 months time thinking I wish id gone with.....

Stayed up way past my bedtime last night researching some of the suggestions. I really like the celsetron starsense explorer 130dx, the tech with app would make all the difference. At the moment we've got an Ipad, with a app that we wave at the sky and hope for the best as we try to point the telescope to it (So basically anything else other than the moon is a guess). I showed a couple for the youtube reviews to the boy this morning and he got quite excited as the prospect of "finding my own star". However it does seem expensive, I'm guessing because it new tech. I've spent a good portion for the day (between home school lessons) trying to work if, the lenses Ive bought for our other scope would be any good. If not what extra would be practical. Crrently Ive got a x2 barlow, 32mm plossl, 8mm plossl and a 90 degree angle thingy (technical name!) . None for them were expensive. I'm tempted by the celestron 8mm -24mm zoom lense, but suspect it will be pants. The 130dx is cheaper than the original scope I was looking at, but is it value for money?

Thank you everyone for your advice, I've certainly got some food for thought. I've also see a secondhand skywatcher skyliner 250p, which I almost bought on impulse. Luckily my wife was there to help with that!! I still like the idea of a goto scope as the boy gets bored really quickly when we are trying to find stuff.

Thanks will do once home school is done for today

Hi, all new to site and telescoping. I bought a celestron 70 travel scope for 9 year old last christmas. While we've had some fun with it, it issuch a pain to set up. Numerous times weve tried to look at stuff and by the time its all panned round ect, the thing we wanted to see has disappeared behind trees. All very annoying, plus the tripod is pretty pants. As we are both enjoying this new hobby I am considering buying skywatcher skymax 127 az-gti wifi telescope. I like the idea of simply having an app on my phone. But have read, heard the app is pretty hit and miss as far as android phones go. We have an ipad but the battery is on it's way out. So just looking for advice and is anyone using synscan app?