wulfrun

Looks to me very suspicious, the missing paint makes a neat-ish circular pattern. I'd say the lower retaining ring has been tightened with the wrong tool, reason unknown. Who knows what else but I can't equate it to "marks from use". Avoid!

Looks like it's held on with rivets, if that's correct you'd need to drill them out and re-rivet afterwards. Rivets and a rivet-gun aren't expensive, just make sure you get the correct size rivets. From the photo, I'd say the lower part looks easier to work on. EDIT: the parts being plastic, drill slowly or you'll melt it. You could also hand-file the rivet heads off.

I saw one if them flying, with a shuttle on it, sometime early-80s. Quite a sight, I thought my eyes were deceiving me!

Do you have any particular interests yet (double stars, moon etc)? The scope comes with a 25mm that is of usable quality and a 10mm that is dubious but not useless. If you want to upgrade one from the outset, go for the 8mm BST to replace the stock 10mm, the BST will be much better. A Barlow would be helpful, a 2x would give you (effectively) a 12.5mm and 4mm too. Most folk own a Barlow or three! Best advice is not to rush into buying a stack of eyepieces until you've used the scope a while and get a feel for what you're lacking. You'll spread the cost and avoid buying stuff you rarely/never use. Oh and welcome to SGL! Keep asking questions, you'll get a range of helpful answers.

Observing from indoors isn't recommended, you're looking through glass and indoors there will be air currents to disrupt things too. Probably at least part of the reason your 4mm wasn't very successful ,although our UK skies can also limit things. Good that you got to enjoy the views though!

Excellent guide to be found here: https://garyseronik.com/a-beginners-guide-to-collimation/ Simple & to the point. Collimation is daunting, fiddly & confusing...but only until you've done it a couple of times!

It'd need to be a seriously powerful laser to damage the optics, I don't see any problem from that aspect. The laser output shouldn't be absorbed to any degree anyway. I'd be more concerned with a) firing a laser into the sky and b) the optical alignment of the laser/polarscope interface.

What is this side-real time to which she refers?? New pronunciation!

Don't think this a brand new idea but I found this on the Beeb. Who knows if/when it'll come to pass but it'd make the 1000s of satellites seem trivial. Power stations in space, beaming energy down to ground via microwaves: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-62982113

Chances are no-one will complain and the council won't send out an inspector, with a measure, to tell you to take it down. Unless you "fess up", of course!

Mystery (to me) solved then. I thought it looked like an upside-down dovetail but I'm not familiar with that particular mount.

Personal choice, some folk use one or the other and some (like myself) like both. A Telrad or similar gets you close to target or to the nearest naked-eye-visible star, then you use a RACI to hone in on the exact point you're after. The RACI allows you to see fainter stuff, the Telrad does not. EDIT: the green-circled, white thing in the picture above shouldn't be there at all, it'll prevent the black bit (dovetail) engaging with your mount. (I think!)

If those are meant to be links embedded, they don't work for me. Generally, a Barlow attaches to an eyepiece of the same size (1.25" or 2") without any kind of adapter. Some Barlows have removable elements that can screw into the filter thread of an eyepiece too, again with no adapter. Generally, you'll need some sort of adapter (or adapters) to fit one to a camera body though.

Which SW150 do you have? There are 2 different mirrors, a 1200mm (f/8) and a 750mm (f/5). Amongst the BST range, the 18mm and 25mm are regarded as the weakest (I don’t speak from experience, only what I've seen written), so they may not play so nicely with the f/5 version. A generic 32mm Plössl would be cheaper for your lowest power/maximum FOV. If your version is the f/8, the 3.2mm BST is too short and even in the f/5 version you probably won't use it much. I wouldn't buy that unless I identified a real need. OVL's Nirvana range are well regarded (I have the 16mm and really like it) for a step up but also about double the price each. Beyond that, you can pretty much pay whatever you have in your wallet!

Lovely shot, nicely confirms what I was seeing visually...if I squint a lot at it!

Just spent most of the evening out with the 150PL. Jupiter was disappointing, not the best I've seen. Pretty poor clarity and so-so seeing earlier on, I couldn't use over x75 on it. I had a look at a few doubles, clusters and the moon whilst waiting for Mars to climb to a decent altitude (had a look early on and it was just a bright orange blob). Managed a low-down look at the Orion nebula, first time this year. Always good to see an old favourite. By the time Mars was up to 50 degrees or so, the clarity had improved noticeably and I got the best views I've had...so far! Hopefully the best is yet to come. Managed to wind up the mag to x266 and spent a good while getting those moments to build up some detail.

That mask is used to achieve critical focus, what benefit we're you thinking of for using one?

I'll have a stab at an answer, with a question...what's "full spectrum" mean anyway? You could argue LF-radio to hard X-ray is "full spectrum" but no sensor does that. It depends on the context, in this case it means near-infra-red plus all visible. The atmosphere filters out the majority of UV-and-up anyway, so it's not much use in a ground-based sensor. EDIT: not well up on this, but don't most astro-mods alter or remove the red/infra-red filters?

By definition, bulb mode can't work... bulb means "open whilst shutter button (or remote) is pressed" and is indeterminate. Unless they provide a means to set the duration! Not beyond the wit of the firmware writers but it doesn't seem anyone does that. Most cameras seem to be limited to 30 sec (ish) max in manual mode, although some Lumix models do 60 sec, maybe others do too. Can you not just plug in an external (proper) intervalometer?

It was the CN-quote that mentioned Mac, he said he'd tried a Windows laptop so he should be OK to update it.

FWIW, I've just updated the firmware to 1.10 (it was showing as 1.07) on mine and now it shows as "SynScan_WiFi_xxxx" for its SSID, as it should have done. If @davehowat is wondering how, proceed as follows: 1) download the update zip file from: http://skywatcher.com/download/software/accessories/ 2) unpack the zip file on a Windows pc/laptop that has WiFi available. 3) fire up your mount, with the WiFi dongle attached. 4) connect the computer/laptop's WiFi to the "ESP-xxxx" network. 5) run the file "SynScanWiFi_FimwareLoader.exe" and click on "Version" to see what you have already. 5) browse to the file "SynScanWiFi_Ver_0110.SSWF" from the drop down then click "Update" 6) wait for the update to reach 100% and it'll prompt you to re-boot the mount/dongle. Done! It should now show "SynScan_WiFi_xxxx" as its SSID. EDIT: mine failed to reach 100% first time, I had to re-boot the mount & start over, don't panic if yours does the same.

Just to throw a bit of confusion in the discussion... I bought same dongle a year or so ago and mine doesn't use the "SynScan###" etc SSID either. I'd have to fire up it and the old phone I use with it to see what it does use. However, it's not caused any issue, works just fine.

To align the finder, you can use a distant object in the daytime. Find a TV aerial etc, get it centred in your highest power EP, then twiddle the RACI's adjusters until it's centred on the same thing. You can also align at night using Polaris (it doesn’t move much), assuming you have sight of it. Personally, I use Polaris and check the RACI as a first step each time I set up. I find removing and re-fitting it loses the setting enough to be annoying, yours may not have that issue

Have a look on this site (the author is also a member on this site), good recommendations on what to buy or avoid: http://binocularsky.com/ If you're going to hand-hold and want best portability, probably wisest to go 8x42 or 10x50 at most and even those benefit from support. Look on the site above also for methods to maximise stability when hand-holding. Most folk get it wrong (that included me) and it makes a noticeable difference when you use the right technique. He also has excellent reviews on various models.

Avoid! Curry's price was the legal-definition of "sale", so they jacked the price up for the required 28 days and then claim it's "reduced". The mount looks very flimsy too, it'll be wobbly & frustrating. If there's a problem with it, they won't have a clue how to deal with it. You'll pay a little more but stick to an astro supplier that knows what they're selling.