Starwatcher2001

Welcome aboard SGL Phil. Good to have you with us. Love the projects that you've done. Well played. I motorised my own homebuilt dob about 20 years ago. The driving software was MSDOS based, provided free by a very helpful American chap called Mel Bartels, who's well know in ATM circles. This communicated using the parallel printer port of an ancient laptop to a home-built driver circuit cobbled together on vero-board. The bipolar steppers came from an old mini-computer printer. The hardest part was the physical connection between the steppers and the mount. I'm no engineer and don't have a lot of facilities, so used threaded nylon rod around both the alt and az wheels, driven with a worm drive. The main problems were accuracy and getting a decent slewing speed. I never overcame the accuracy issue but managed to get "goto" within 2-3 degrees or so of the intended targets. The tracking worked well enough for visual (microstepping the motors). Slewing problems were solved with a combination of ramping up and down the stepper speeds, and adding flywheels to the motors keep the momentum. Oh, the whole thing ran on two car batteries, which weren't exactly light to move around. It was a fun project and I learned a lot, but the whole apparatus was unwieldy and needed a lot of babysitting. Having realised I'd spent 18 months messing with tech rather than doing much observing, I gave up and reverted the dob to manual. Things have moved on a lot since then, and you look to have a lot more engineering skills. Looking forward to seeing what you create Phil. All the best, Mark

Welcome aboard SGL Malcolm. Good to have you with us. Nah, you haven't been spending, you've been investing. You'll be quids in when your FC100DC and FS60CB/Q have puppies 🙂

Welcome aboard SGL Steve. Good to have you with us.

Welcome aboard SGL Bob. Good to have you with us. Yeah, weather's not been playing very well here either 😞

Welcome aboard SGL Tim. Good to have you with us.

Buying new kit invariably summons the clouds John. Welcome to astronomy 🙂 FLO, our sponsor often puts stickers on the boxes of new equipment that they sell, which reads "May contain clouds". They've got a good sense of humour as well as selling good kit! Enjoy the BST 8mm. I like mine.

Peter's comment about always using "up" and "right" as the last movements when centering a star is easily overlooked. The reason is that it takes up the slack in the gears in the same way that normal tracking will. My 9.25 evo mount has a suprising amount of backlash in the gears and failing to do this definitely does affect accuracy.

Welcome aboard SGL David. Good to have you with us. Congrats on the Obsy too. We're all on a learning journey in one way or another, so any questions don't hesitate. I've learned stacks on here.

Welcome to SGL. Good to have you with us.

Welcome aboard SGL Martin. Good to have you with us.

Welcome aboard SGL Alex. Good to have you with us. Hope you get some nice clear skies to take that kit for a good work-out. Hope you'll share some of your images with the rest of us.

Welcome aboard SGL Masher. Good to have you with us. Welcome back to astronomy too. I had a 20 year hiatus, and can confidently let you know that your favourite objects are still up there waiting to be viewed 🙂 Nice scope, but you've incurred the wrath of the weather gods of course. When you get some decent weather, hope you and your daughter have a blast.

Welcome aboard SGL Ian. Good to have you with us.

Police helicopter following some person of ill repute on a nicked motorbike? Maybe it's moving rapidly to scene in relatively straight line, then manouvering to follow. Could it be the search light that's doing the movement as they scan around?

I love the BBC and love that they are trying to get people, especially kids, interested in astronomy, but for goodness sake get the basics right. "Jupiter will be visible to the naked eye on Thursday evening and it promises to be an even more spectacular sight through a pair of binoculars or a telescope." Jupiter is visible to the naked eye for much of the year. Okay, opposition is a great time to look, but this suggests that if you don't see it Thursday you'll miss it. "The astronomer added that planets are usually in opposition for a very short length of time but, during that brief window, they are visible to the naked eye." No, no, no.... The opposition might be for a very short length of time, but they are visible for much, much longer. I get that this is for children and they have to make it simple and exciting, but come on. 😭 Is this just me being picky, or does it rub anyone else up the wrong way? https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/58256430

Welcome aboard SGL Alex. Good to have you with us. I'm purely visual but look forward to seeing your photos in due course. Good luck with the AP.

Welcome aboard SGL. Good to have you with us. Never too late to start looking at those photons 🙂

I can't add anything substantive to the excellent replies above, but I've had exactly the same experience with the eyepieces you mention. My Pentax XW40 and XW10 are very comfortable for me with glasses and I intend to get more as finances allow. But the ES82 18mm was like looking down a straw when using glasses. It was a beautiful eyepiece, but just didn't work for me. I bought it second-hand on here and then sold it later for a similar amount, so it was a worth while exercise. If you have a local astronomy club that meets near you, it would be worth while going along and trying various eyepieces to see what works for you.

https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/378196-svbony-68°-ultra-wide-angle-20mm-eyepiece-first-look

Welcome aboard SGL Mainak, good to have you with us.

Welcome aboard SGL Dave. Good to have you with us.

Welcome aboard SGL StarWomble. Good to have you with us.

For me, this is probably the most important link that Tiny Clanger has given you: https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/196278-what-can-i-expect-to-see/ As Craig said about the 130p - "This scope will show you Jupiters cloud bands and the great red spot, plus Saturn's rings, moons and the Cassini division." He's right. I've seen them with smaller scopes and larger scopes than that one. BUT, they aint going to be big and detailed and colourful, or anything like the pictures in the books, or what you'll find on here. Taking images of planets (or any astro object) is a very different game to visual astronomy. None of us want to put you off astronomy, it's a fantastic hobby and you'll remember the first time you see Saturn's rings for the rest of your life, we're just trying to make sure you don't buy loads of kit, and then be disappointed when what you see doesn't match your expectations. You might be new to this, but you've got a lot of experienced people in your corner who can help you get the very best from this hobby. Cheers, Mark

Congratulations John and thanks for all the wisdom. I've learned a lot from you in the short time I've been here.

Hiya and Welcome to SGL. Your scope seems to have a 1200mm focal length at f/5.9, so the 9mm will give 133x magnification which should work perfectly fine with that scope. Does it work okay during the day when looking at objects a good distance away? What make of eyepiece is your 9mm, and do you have anything in between the 30 and the 9? Are you using a diagonal with the scope. If you start with the focuser all the way out, then move inwards all the way in, what happens? Usually an object (like a star) will start out blurry, gradually get better and better, snap into focus and then get more and more blurry. I know you're not seeing the moment of focus, but does it generally behave like that? The other thing that might be happening is that you change the focus from one end to the other and it gets better and better, but never quite gets there. If that's the case, you may need to add or remove an extension to get the right focal point.