Starwatcher2001

Welcome aboard SGL thingy. Good to have you with us. I find it very helpful to have a plan of some kind, however rough, otherwise I tend to look at my favourites and not really make the best use of the scant observing time we get in the UK. Currently on my list is a small collection of interesting doubles and variables, and some open clusters I've not looked at before. In particular I'm hoping to spend some quality time with RZ Cassiopeiae, which is a variable that drops over a magnitude over the space of a few short hours every 29 hours or so. I'm hoping to work out it's timing for myself and be able to accurately predict the next eclipse. I rarely stick entirely to the plan as there's always interesting items in the neighbourhood that demand attention, but having a general direction of travel is useful. Hope you get the clear skies to have some brilliant times with your favourites and some new jewels in the coming weeks.

Welcome back. There's a lot of 'retired' stargazers coming back to the fold. I've been out for nearly 2 decades. It's great to be observing between the clouds again.

A previous thread says there's three batteries, so you've just got the one to extract. It also explains how to collimate the laser: https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/337135-revelation-astro-collimator-battery/

What a beautiful piece of equipment, not surprised you're chuffed with it. Nice one. Looking forward to hearing how it performs under the skies.

Welcome aboard SGL Jim. Good to have you with us. While you're waiting for your new scope to arrive, now would be an ideal time to familiarise yourself with the sky, if you're not already. Armed with a sky chart, or perhaps an app like Stellarium or SkySafari, a flask of coffee and perhaps a pair of binoculars if you have some, spend some time under the stars and get to know your way around and how the constellations move during the night. From your location, with dark clear skies, the amount of stars can be overwhelming. Get a feel for the relationships of objects to each other, and the names and positions of the brightest stars. By Dec/Jan, they will have moved of course and the winter favourites like Orion will be up, but that adds to the fun. All of that will help you hit the ground running when your kit turns up. It also gives you time to sort out other essentials like red lights, warm gear, maybe an observing chair, table to put all your kit, scope accessories (dew shield, power supply, eyepieces etc).

Bluetack on the end of a pencil?

Pleased to hear you're making progress Jonathan. Hope the mount fault doesn't cause you too much grief.

I had my StarSense "locking" when I first got it, but it's been fine since. I think it was down to user error - me. Some sequences require two keys (like changing motor speed). If I accidentally press one key but not notice, it patiently waits for the second expected key whilst locking out anything else. It looks like the software is hanging.

It might be that the seeing wasn't very good. I don't know where you're located, but right now in the UK, Saturn and Jupiter are low in the sky meaning the views of them are fairly poor much of the time (lots of atmosphere to look through). If your 6mm and 8mm eps focus nicely on stars and other objects, that's almost certainly the reason.

StarSense is quite expensive and does have it's own learning curve when you first get it, but for me it's a time-saver. I set up my scope and set StarSense going, and then bring out my eyepiece case, chair, coffee etc. By the time I'm ready to observe, it's finished aligning and I can just slew to the first target of the night. The only other prep I do is bringing my tube outside for an hour before-hand to cool to ambient temperature.

Blimey, you're right. Your little test sequence produces the same results on my 9.25 Evo. (Handset firmware 1.20.20162 Jun 11 2020). I've never noticed as I use SkySafari which is better behaved. Good bit of Sluthing Siouxie.

The StarSense I have (different scope), provides a camera and new hand controller (that contains software to run the camera and also duplicates most of the functionality you already have in your existing controller). This is enough to use StarSense's alignment abilities. It doesn't need WiFi to operate. If you had WiFi as well (built into the mount, or an additional adapter), you then have the ability to connect to a phone or tablet of some kind and use a planetarium program such as SkySafari. Personally I love that way of working as it makes navigating so much easier.

Can you get focus on distant objects (say over 1/2 a mile) during the day? Other than the eyepiece there's no other tubes (barlow or anything else) in the focuser, is there? Presumably you've moved the focuser all the way from fully in, to fully out, and still can't get a sharp focus? When you've got the focuser all the way out, try undoing the eyepiece and gently move it outwards whilst looking through the eyepiece. Can you now get focus? (I'm wondering if there just isn't enough travel on the focuser for some reason). Do you have any other eyepieces that do give a sharp image? Cheers, Mark

Welcome aboard SGL Rez. Good to have you with us. A good set of bins and a solid stand is a great way to observe the universe, and absolutely stunning when done from a dark sky.

Some people use a hood of some description or a blanket over their heads and eyepiece when observing to keep out stray light. Eyepatches are also worth a shot, only flipping it up when at the eyepiece. The neighbours may think you're a pirate, but who cares 😀 I tend to need more than one 'pit stop' per observing session, so I make sure I keep my observing eye tightly closed if I need to go inside the house. Cyclops comments from my wife just bounce off now.

I've just been into my settings (Menu | Telescope | Tracking Rate) and found it switched to "disabled". This is just switched on from cold and with no alignment. However, it tracks objects perfectly well without any effort on my part. My mount is also ALT-AZ. I suspect (but don't know) that this is set automatically after alignment, when you choose a specific object to track (eg: planet or star, which move differently). It might be worth checking and setting AFTER alignment if you're not already doing that. I'd also try deliberately setting it to DISABLED and letting it figure it out for itself. If it's a software glitch, resetting the scope to factory defaults might work. (Obviously copy the settings you love, such as backlash, down somewhere before doing that). Have a look at the software version in your handset (MENU | HAND CONTROL | GET VERSION INFO), and check up on Celestron's site. It might be a bug, or a newer version of firmware might fix it. https://www.celestron.com/pages/firmware-update-history

When I first started observing I'd been looking at Saturn for a while, nudging my dob to keep it in the eyepiece. After a while I looked through the finder and realised I'd spent the last few minutes watching the planet though our privet hedge! It taught me that a few flecks of dust on the mirror just aren't going to affect the view.

Hi GiL, welcome aboard SGL. Good to have you with us. Looking through a telescope you will see photons that have been travelling for millions or billions of years, and that nobody else will ever see. Understanding how only makes the objects more beautiful. Enjoy your journey.

Next scope??? Oh, oh... you've caught the astronomy fever. 😀 If you take a powerful magnifying glass and look at a newspaper picture you'll get a bigger image, but no more detail as the image is just made made up of coloured dots (or they were when I was a kid!) It's a similar thing with telescopes. After magnifying to a certain point you just see what was already there and no further detail. To make matters worse, because the same amount of light is spread across a bigger area, it becomes dimmer. (Point a flashlight directly down and you'll get a bright, tight beam. Now shine it at an angle and as the area increases it becomes dimmer). The only way to overcome this is to grab more of those photons and therefore a brighter image to start with. The simplest way is to have a bigger aperture, as others have said. Other things like flocking the inside of the tube, keeping stray light out and using eyepieces with good coatings, all help.

Hi Brad, Welcome aboard SGL. Good to have you with us. I'm not sure why you would want to add 10 alignment points. Generally it should slew and track pretty well after it's done it's 3 successful "plate solve" images. Adding alignment points is only generally done if you're working an area of the sky and the alignment is a bit off in that area. It gives it a more accurate view of that part of the sky. I don't know what scope you've got, but did you do the "calibrate" routine after the very first StarSense alignment? What that does is tell StarSense how the angle of the optical tube differs from that of the camera. You only need to do it once (assuming you don't remove the camera mount itself - it's still okay to remove and replace the camera in it's mount between sessions). Without that calibration step I'm not sure what the result would be. If not, give that a go. It's on the alignment menu. When you say it doesn't track, do you mean it doesn't move the motors at all when you're on an object, or it does but gets it wrong somehow? I notice you're in the Southern Hemisphere. I wonder if you need to tell it somehow, or if it deduces that from the longitude and latitude. Cheers, Mark

Welcome aboard SGL, good to have you with us. Sorry can't help on the astrophotograhy front, it's a dark art to me.

Welcome aboard SGL Armand, good to have you with us. I like your astronomy pages, especially the observing sessions in the city. Letting people look through your scope is a great way to show off the wonders of the universe and encourage the next generation of astronomers.

Welcome aboard SGL. Love the image, nice one.

A heart stopping moment for something else. A couple of weeks ago I was out observing, totally oblivious to the world when I looked up and saw an animal walking through the garden. We have the occasional fox coming through, so I thought it might have been him. Without thinking I switched my head-mounted red torch on. The animal scarely took a look, screeched and sped off, giving the wheelie bin a massive whack on route. When I recounted the tale to my wife she had me switch it on and look in the mirror. Two glowing red lights, one either side. Very "demon eyes".

Welcome back.