Starwatcher2001

I've just had a watch of that video HMS_Furious linked to, which isn't half bad. There doesn't look much to the alignment process, and it seems to take everything it needs (location and time) from the phone. Provided your location is correct (it's worth checking your phone knows where it is) and you go through the process of centering the correct stars, there's nothing much else to get wrong. It asks you to confirm alignment for each object you goto, which then adjusts the alignment. If you play the game for four or five objects, does it eventually start getting it right, or does it continue to be all over the place? I'm wondering if something is slipping. If you slow the slewing speed down does that help? Does it appear to stutter? What's the power to the scope like?

Did you check your location?

I'm another one with astigmatism, and spectacles. Mine is most apparent in low power eyepieces (40, 32 , 25mm) which are unusable without glasses. Thankfully (for the reasons I've just learned from @vlaiv above - thanks!), the eye-relief on the lower power eps are good enough to use with glasses. Higher power eps are useless to me with glasses (looking down a straw), but don't show my astimatism without glasses. I've just ordered a 9mm Celestron X-Cel Lx eyepiece, which has better eye-relief to see if I that works for me with glasses. If successful I'll probably wear glasses constantly while outside to avoid swapping on and off, which is annoying when making notes and checking charts etc. As for bins, I went for a pair of Nikon Monarch 5's which have nearly 20mm of eye-relief and work perfectly with glasses for both astronomy and terriestrial viewing. Incidentally, you can get contact lenses that correct for astigmatism. They are "weighted" at the bottom so in your eye they naturally settle in the right orientation. I tried them for a while, but just didn't get on with contacts in general.

Siouxsie, I have a tip for you when using the StarSense. I spent a good 30 minutes last night failing to get it going. It was thrashing around all over the place, before I unplugged it and did a manual align. When I packed up at 3am this morning, I noticed I hadn't taken the lens cap off. If I had a brain I'd be dangerous. What did surprise me is that during it's efforts, it claimed to be finding stars, but not enough to plate solve. I wonder if there's some duff pixels in there.

There is a lot to learn, but you don't have to understand everything to get started. Just a book on the constellations, or charts printed from the net, is enough to get you started with learning your way around the sky. If you've got a pair of binoculars, better still, there's loads you can see with those. Once you develop a passion for it, you'll start to work out what you fancy taking further (some telescopes are better suited to the moon, planets and smaller objects, and others better for large faint extended objects like galaxies). Then the limits are set by how much time and money you want to spend. Warning: this is addictive - but in a good way. It's worth checking if you've got any local clubs near you so you can talk in person to other telescope owners. At the present things are a bit quiet (covid and summer), but hopefully in the next month or so clubs will start up again and you may be able to go along and look through people's scopes and see for yourself what a great hobby this can be. Reading through some of the threads on here, especially in the newcomers areas can be enlightening. You'll get to understand how different people approach astronomy, what they get from it and the reasons they've chosen the equipment they've got. That can be more enlightening than just reading the sometimes dry equipment specifications. Things like whether you wear glasses, whether you're going to observe from your house or take your kit to a dark site, whether you want to just look (visual astronomy) or take pictures (astrophotography) can have a dramatic effect on what will be useful to you. Seeing black holes is a bit ambitious 🙂 https://www.quotes.net/show-quote/66989 Remember on here, no question is a daft question, so feel free to ask for advice.

Hiya. Welcome board. This is an old thread, but has some good general advice for those new to astronomy. https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/35441-essential-reading-for-those-who-are-thinking-about-getting-into-astronomy/ Currently there's a bit of a shortage of astronomy equipment, including scopes, due to CV19. Hopefully in the next month or two things will get back to normal. I've got kit ordered that's on a 30-40 day lead time. I suppose it teaches patience, which you'll need for this hobby. All the best, Mark

Don't know what your skies were like when you looked at M13, but ours were poor last night with high whispy clouds. I looked at M15 (another globular cluster) in my 9.25" SCT and it looked pretty poor.

Hi Roger. Welcome to SGL and to the wonderful hobby that is astronomy. The amount of information can seem quite overwhelming at first, so really do take your time and ask all the questions you want. At the start, you may not even be sure which questions to ask, but we've all been there and there's no such thing as a daft question on here. Meanwhile, if you're not already familiar with the sky, I'd suggest getting a good book on the constellations and spending some time getting to know your way around. The things you see and start to recognise will soon become familiar friends. If you already have a pair of binoculars of any size, you've already got your first piece of astronomy equipment. Sitting or laying out, and just gazing up at the night sky both amazing and educational. These warm summer evenings are an ideal time. Many of us keep our bins handy even when we've got telescopes. What are the skies like near you? Cheers, Mark

Glad you got this sorted. Hopefully you can start enjoying your scope now.

Not surprised you're frustrated, and sorry if you feel treated like a newbie. I've been a software developer for 40 years, into astronomy for over 20, and I still got caught out by the MM/DD/YY format with my new scope. I just didn't see the wood for the trees, and my scope exhibited the same sort of behaviour as yours is doing, including trying to find an object by pointing at the lawn! However, you seem to have eliminated the date confusion from the possibilities. I bet it's something equally obvious that we're all missing. Maybe you could post a photo or two of how you've got it set up? Someone might spot the problem. Don't give up mate, you'll get there! Cheers, Mark

Welcome aboard Graham. You're in the right place!

I don't know your scope, but are you entering the date in the correct format? Many scopes are made by our American cousins, who insist on entering the date as MM/DD/YY. At this time of the month when 06/08/20 and 08/06/20 are both valid, things can be confusing for the scope and catch people out.

There's one more item to enhance the experience... good music. My preference is ambient stuff like the appropriately named Red Shift, or Cosmic Smokers, or maybe some Jean Michel Jarre or Tangerine Dream. One ambient artist who I enjoy star watching to, is "Ian Boddy", who's also a fellow observer and has performed at our local planetarium.

This looks like a good resource: "How to strip and clean the optics of a SCT (Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e66yIuD3cMk

Possibly a dry solder joint. If you have a soldering iron, it's worth going around the board remelting the connections and adding a little solder where necessary. It might resurrect it. Glad you've got a replacement.

I agree with Alfian. Looks like there's some dust and maybe a bit of fluff on the mirror, but the line you've circled moves in relation to the dust, so it can't be a scratch on the surface. The primary's not in the image, so that's not it. Can't see it as being anything other than a reflection.

Welcome aboard. Did it come with any eyepieces (lenses)? You'll need at least one to use it.

The camera has a FOV of 6.88º x 5.16º, and it needs to get 3 good images, preferably in different parts of the sky and different elevations. It certainly isn't fazed by my house (obstructs bottom 20 degrees of sky to south), garden fence (15 degrees for the entire west run), and trees behind me (virtually obstructs north to zenith), so I think it's pretty damn good.

I'd set up in a different place to see Jupiter, or wait until it's moved. I know at the moment that's not aways easy with it being so low. I've got around a 40 minute window when it's visible between my house and the next. If I move the scope into the front garden I'm swamped with light.

As there's no internal encoders on the NexStar, if you drop either clutch and move the tube, the software has no idea that you've done that, or that you're now pointing elsewhere. It screws-up any alignment you've done, but the software doesn't actually know that and likely gets very confused. You've got to throw a six and start the alignment again. Shame as it means using the clutches to quickly move around doesn't work well. Switching off the scope certainly clears the alignment information from the scope, but I think, SkyPortal records and uses it's own alignment information. As I understand it, the only way to clear any previous alignment is to use "Connect and Align" rather than "Connect". Connect keeps old alignment data and assumes you just lost the connection to the scope. Maybe someone with more of a clue than me can confirm or correct this? If it tries to plate solve the house, let it do it's thing and it will just fail that one image and try somewhere else. I leave it to it and use that time to get eyepieces, coffee etc from the house. Once you get StarSense to see sense... it works very well. Even in my Bortle 7/8 back garden, with overhanging trees and some clouds in the sky, it somehow manages to work things out.

Hi. Welcome to the board and welcome to astronomy.

I have the peasants version of the Evolution 9.25, rather than the Anniversary one, also with StarSense. Other than a working power light, I have exactly the same set of issues as you (including the StarSense controller with some of the options missing), so if you do find a resolution, please let us know. Does your accessory tray have six little rubber bumpers slotted into it, to stop it catching on the tripod leg when it's all folded up? If so, I'd suggest you superglue the little perishers in place. They fall off at the drop of a hat and I've already lost two in the long grass. Cheers, Mark

I had a fight when I first tried StarSense. The biggest mistake was not doing the calibration step after the very first alignment step, so the optical path of the camera and tube were misaligned and it was forever missing the target. Once I'd done that, and let it run through it's camera routine again, that was cured. I also found the key sequence when using the hand controller a bit confusing and I was never sure if I was supposed to be pressing ENTER or ALIGN at particular points in the sequence. Using SkySafari seems a lot easier as the screen prompts are more explanatory and less ambiguous. If I understand it correctly, it's important if you use an "app" like SkySense or SkyPortal to do alignment, you need to use that method throughout the whole session. You can't align via the app, and then add additional alignment points using the hand controller (and visa versa).

Beware I might not know what I'm talking about, but could this be backlash? My thinking is that if the scope's last goto step is up and right, and you're correcting this to centre it in the eyepiece using down and left, maybe the slack in the gears might be the difference. Subsequent attempts are just repeating the problem. Mind you 1/2 the FOV in a 25mm ep is a long way.

A warm welcome aboard from up norf. Warning, this hobby can be addictive - in a good way.