Arlington1

Thats Nice and the level I would like to get to!!

Thanks and yes. I did drag out a moon filter that the Mrs brought me with the scope. I used it last night but pics came out with the moon looking green.

Thats interesting. How would I do that?

I have got a smart phone holder. Just cant get on with it! I have a nice baader Hyperion eye peice and I am thinking of getting the adaptors so I can connect my Canon 70d to it

So I took my first pics of the moon last night. just with my galaxy S9 through my Celestron 127 SLT. Be gentle with me, I know they are not up to the standard of some of you more experience guys but, I am happy!

Thanks agian for all responses. I am successfuly aligning everytime now. Not 100% sure what was wrong and it may be a few but the maing thing seems to be that I was taking to long between aligning the scope and pressing align! The reason I feel it was this and not something else is, I just went through the alingment in my living room, just pretending to point at stars and niot even puttng the right time and location in and it successfully aligned. Obviously it would be alingned incorrectly but the fact is, I got through the whole process. I then tired its that night outside and bang, job done. Had some good veiwing of the moon last night. WOW!!!

thanks. It is a solid patio I use. It does settle down, its just the mearest touch like when I focus or touch the scope with my head etc. I am struggle to get the best out of veiwing without resting my eye socket against the eye piece.

Hi again all, Well pretty successful night! Firstly, I was not expecting to see the moon when I stepped outside so had my first look at that. At first it was not good. It was so bad that I thought I had condensation on the lenses or something. Then I realised I was looking through the glass ballustrade at the end of my patio! It looked stunning when I figured it out but I did not want to spend too much time looking as I felt this was a great opportunity to do the solar alingn. I did this using the mmon and then asked the scope to go to Jupiter. It was directly in line with Jupiter but a bit high so I did it again, on Jupiter and told it to go to Saturn....and it was spot on. It was still a little out when I asked it to go back to the moon though. Next, I cleared all that and did a 3 star align. Success on first attempt! Very happy I now have more questions about wobble, viabrations, been way to veiw, what to veiw etc but I will do some research first as I am sure I can already find answers to most my questions on what seems like a great forum Thanks again everyone.

Thanks again everyone, great responses. I have input my Long/lat in the correct way now and straight away I note polaris is listed in the star list, so that looks promising. As advised, I may not use this as an allingment start tonight but its good to see it there. So for tonight, I am going to try the following, based on responses to the OP and my posts. I am now confident I have the right time zone and location. I will work a little harder to getting my finder scope alligned. I have already done it on a distant telegraph pole this morning but will check against some stars tonight. After this and eeing as I will start the night looking at my new freind Jupiter, I will start off with a solar allign. After that, I think I will go back to the auto three star allign and remember to not sod around pressing enter and align, get it done quicker. I will base the rest of my evening on the success/failure of these two and up date you one way or the other tomorrow morning.

AHHH!!! That might help!

Thanks @Cosmic Geoff Solar align does make sense, as I have no issues finding Jupiter! One thing I would like answered for sure. How accurate does the location need to be? If I select Brighton, when I am in hastings (30 miles away) is that going to put things well out or make little difference?

Thanks @happy-kat Ah yeh, thats cool with the time zone. I assumed as it all seems to be American set up the time zone would be the same, I forget that it is us that everyone else sets their clock by (that gives me a little satisfaction i must admit). I will check allignment first thing I do tonight. I do struggle a little with aligning in the eye piece I must admit, I may invest in a cross hair one. In one of the comments in here I noticed it said you need to get on with pressing the enter and align buttons as you go through the procedure and it suggested trying indoors, just fooling the scope into thinking you are aiming at stars. I just did that and got my first sucssessful alignment!! Evebn though I know its not aligned correctly, it was good to get a success! As you suggest, I will also try three stars tonight and not Polaris. Thanks again

Sorry, me again. just something to add that I just noticed. The instruction manual says that after you have entered the standard or daylights savings time (I enter daylight savings) it will ask what time zone you are in. Mine has never asked this. It goes straight to entering the time?

Hi All, THIS IS A LONG ONE BUT PLEASE HELP!! New to this forum and I hope no one minds if I jump in and resurect this thread as I am at the stage of pulling my hair out!! The issues as described in the first post on this thread, pretty much descibe my problems that I have been having since being given my scope 11 days ago as a complete surprise for my 54 birthday. I was excited but perhaps a little but 'meh' when I recieved in but on the first night, two things got me hooked, in fact, I could not even sleep! That was Jupiters moons and Saturns rings. Yeh, its one thing to be able to focus in on a planet but when I saw the bringht dots around Jupiter and realised (after a quick google search confirmation) they were its moons and then, simply having my breath taken away but Saturns rings, suddenly I became an amatuer astronomer. Anyway, firstly the potential reasons for my problems may well be above in the answers and I shall print these out and go armed, ready to do battle with my scope tonight, with this thread but I also would like to see if anyone has the magic answer or perhaps can see something wrong with what I am doing. So firstly a little about me. My eyesite is not great. Astigmatism, keratoconus, etc. I have had 6 years of treatments that have resulted in cataracts, lens replacement theropy and still waiting for my last op in my right eye to hopefully, correct my vision. At the moment I wear reading and distance glasses. Not after any sypathy but just telling you as it does hamper my veiwing pleasure and could be part of the set up issues. I live just outside Hastings, East Sussex and have the privalege of my back garden looking over the North Weald AONB. I look pretty much exactly north west. About 200 yards to my left (looking NW) is an annoying street lamp that gives out too much light pollutuion but other than that, its nice and dark. To the side of my house, I can look South East and get to see Jupiet and Saturn rise each night. So back to my alignment issues. Several times I tried Sky Align and it has failed every single time. I have watched on line videos and followed everything through but faliure after faliure! On the way I have made every mistake you can, which does not help. Everytime you see a mistake you are making, you think the next set up will work and its even more gutting when it does not. Wrong date format, not putting in daylight saving, not leveling, all of them. I tried inputing long and lat and what a nightmare that was. I had to do a self learing session on this when I saw there are fifferent formats and then several different amount of digits. I ended up with 050.53.02 00.37.20 Is that right for Hastings and how much does it matter if I put that in or can I chose the nearest city option (nearest City is Brighton, 32 miles away, as the crow flies). I am entering the date correctly now and I belive the seconds are not that important? I am using 24hr format (not sure if there is an option for am/pm) I have alinged the finderscope Last night, after some research I decided to tryAuto two star align. and that failed twice. It started with problems straight away. I went out armed with a youtube video showing how to use this. I found out where Polaris is and duly waited for it to get dark enough to find Polaris. When I came to do the auto twom star allingment, I found that Polaris was not in the list available!! What the hell? Thats 'the' star surely, how can the scope not list that as an option. So then, I am using a phone app trying to find another named star. These apps are great but I still find it a bit tricky to actually be sure I am selection the right stars. Anyway, I gave up and decided just to look at Jupiter and Saturn but the Mrs said, lets try one start align. I told her she can do what she wants but auto two star should work and I dont see why anything else will! It worked!!! Dam her! She used Vega I think. So, then I told the scope to find Jupiter. It started slewing in the right direction but ended up pointing too high, by about a thumbs width. Thats oaky I thought, bacause I had seen on a youtube video that you can align to objects as you find them. I tried this but it failed (I think because I am so far out) So then we told it to go find Ursa Major. Off it went in the right general direction but again, it was too high (I was expecting it to be too low if anything!). At that, I went back to looking at Jupiter and Saturn. One success of the evening was that it was now tracking, which made looking at them so much easier. So, any advice before tonight? I am hoping that it being too high on Jupiter and Ulsa Major, may give someone a clue as to what I have done wrong?