M40

Hello Newey and welcome to the site.

A very interesting question and one I have wondered about myself on the upgrade path. I suppose question number one has to be have you seen or can you see it operating? If its remote, I would ask the seller for a short film showing it driving to a target from the handset together with a few pictures, it won’t be a cheap item even used so its not too much to ask for.

A comfort factor exists in that a complete kit of parts is available should the motors, circuit board or handset fail, not cheap though; I've no idea if items are available separately, so after that its all down to budget.

All the best and hope it works out for you. 

There had to be one of these sooner or later, the way the seestar works on the tripod something lightweight could be fixed to the device itself. I hadn't got past a plastic bag and tiewrap in my design 🤣

Hello DanaS and welcome to the site 

+1 for the seestar, its a phenomenal piece of kit. As Elp said, don't worry about an additional power pack and have a look around the site at what the seestar has achieved both with very simple phone images and others with very light processing. Please note that the seestar is very good on deep sky, the sun and the moon but is not for planets.

Also have a look on YouTube for cuiv the lazy geek and some of his videos on the seestar, if his enthusiasm doesn't sell it, nothing will 🤣

All the best.

Hello JackW07, my first proper telescope was an 8" dob, I bought a x2 barlow, then I bought a much better x2 barlow, then realising just how fast everything moves I bought a baader zoom with its associated barlow. To this day I have still not used a barlow but I use the zoom.... a lot. So can I suggest, dont buy a barlow but think about maybe getting an eyepiece that you can take with you on your journey. A zoom will likely give you a range of eyepieces between 8 and 24 and removes the need to keep swapping eyepieces which, imo, works perfectly with a dob. All the best.

I always carried mine in two parts for a couple of reasons; I had four steps and about 5M of uneven paving to traverse plus I am very good at finding trip hazards 🤦‍♂️ enjoy your new telescope 👌

Hello DAT and welcome to the site.

Best place to start is have a look around the site and see what people are achieving and what they are using. There is also a useful tool that is found at the top of the page under resources which is a field of view tool. You can input various telescopes, eyepieces, cameras etc and then select targets to give an idea of what could be achieved with what. Please treat it as a guide though. 

As you say, a 150p or pds and a selection of eyepieces/camera would give you a good range of targets but you must also consider the mount as very much at the top of your list. If you could think on a rough budget we could then provide a few options for you. Likewise also think of storage of your telescope, a 200p dob is big, did I mention it was big? So think about moving it too. 

All the best

45 minutes ago, Stu1smartcookie said:

Have to say those last two evenings were heaven sent . Back to normal today though ie wind and rain . Luck has run out ! 

You had two clear nights 😱 that's just being greedy,  I say, nay, demand that you share them out 😉

Where are you guys getting these clear skies from???? I just about saw Jupiter through the mess last night, who are you paying?

There is a skymax180 for sale on the site for just above your budget, a fantastic telescope for double stars. I keep mine in the garage and never been concerned with cool down times. By the time I have it all set up, it's good to go. All the best

2 hours ago, Elp said:

The LP filter built into the Seestar is a wide bandpass dual band (ha and o3) filter so you don't need one, likely you've noticed a significant difference if looking at a galaxy with it enabled and not enabled as it'll block most of the galaxy out if the specs of the filter are correct. For anyone who uses camera lenses or a telescope, an Optolong Lenhance/extreme/ultimate or equivalent Idas NBZ/Antlia ALPT etc make a lot of difference on emission nebula rich in ha and o3.

I suppose Cuiv was going to try it as he likely already has one and he would turn the inbuilt filter off. Will make for a good comparison, hope he does a video on it soon. 

Out of stock..classic 🤦‍♂️ 30 - 40 days.....but I want it now 🤣

Ii bought mine from rs..... uk.rs-online.com it's an RS Pro steel wall box ip66 with backplate. 2 years later and not a sign of rust, when you drill any holes drill in the bottom only. The rain guard which doubles as a table top is just a metal plate fixed to a couple of angled brackets with a plate along the bottom to stop the tablet sliding off. You should be able to get alternatives from a local electrical wholesaler likewise a plastic enclosure is an option. Hope it helps.

3 hours ago, Elp said:

An OSC dual band filter provides a night and day difference than imaging without in LP environments.

Interesting point, I noted that Cuiv in one of his video's on the ss50 talked about the Optolong L extreme filter. Other than a few cost effective colour filters that I bought for planets, I have no filters to speak of so if I got one, it would likely be for the ss50 only.

Looking on flo, the optolong is a osc dual band type and the 2" filter would in my mind be an expensive one, so, is it worth getting? Does anybody have one?

10 hours ago, carastro said:

l think the only problem with this is going to be getting sucked into imaging for real and all it’s costs etc   Lol 

I suppose time will tell, but for me, at the moment, as my only widefield piece of kit the seestars enables me to get pictures of things that I just would not be able to get with my other telescopes. So I see no need to go down that rabbit hole; maybe learn how to brighten the ss50 pictures so that would be my only step into processing.

Hello Ithan and welcome to the site.

When you say you would like to observe deep space, do you mean take pictures or more visual? If you could give us a few more pointers as to what you would like to do, that would be great. It will be difficult to create a dso package with your budget but it can be achieved if you look at visual on planets and the moon, so is this of interest to you?

Also with your budget, have you looked at the seestars s50? This an amazing piece of kit for its budget, have a look on here and on YouTube to see if this is of interest.

All the best 

100 years old and most still better than I managed 👌 

good find 👍

Question on the focusing, I set the software switch to show focusing panel, then I couldn't find the focusing panel, could someone point me in the right direction or does it not work in scenery mode? Ta much 

Latest addition landed this morning, so using one of powerlords adapters, I now have my dewshield

It's a clear focusing filter with a 16mm extension. Plan is to stop any dew from getting on the lens plus a small lightshield. Interesting thing is how a clear focusing filter affects the picture...

The picture on the left is without the filter and on the right with. It only takes a few seconds to fit so the way it affected the picture was quite surprising so it will be interesting to compare puctures at night. You might also note the change in the colour of the sky, in the space of about 5 minutes it went from ok ish to get it all indoors quick :D. The latest storm has landed so it's game over for a few days. 

1 hour ago, CHRlS said:

I'll be sure to search for Gassendi next time there is a break in the clouds. I'll also look into the book on double stars

Found the link... Ags on this site has three downloadable books, if you do a search in members for Ags then click on one of her posts then look in herd descriptor at the bottom you will find the link. All the best.

Going to echo what PeterC65 said in that the 8" newt will be very good for eeva enabling some very small galaxies but you will need a very good mount to go with it. People do use an heq5 with an 8" but its on its limits and as Peter said it becomes a windsock. I use an 85mm refractor on an heq5 and it enables most of the Messier objects, so it really comes down to which camera you match it with and what you want to see.

And as Peter said, use the calculator as a guide, stick in as many combo's as you can think of using both your telescope and dslr then swap things up. When playing with the calculator I tend to use M51 as a guide in the fov,  you have to start somewhere 😉 

All the best 

Hello CHRIS and welcome to the site. With you on the double star thing, have a look for "Discovering Double Stars" by Agnes Clarke. There might be a downloadable on this site somewhere, worth a search and a look. Moon challenge for you, find Gassendi a particular favourite of mine, then spot the crater on the rim, this is Gassendi A, it is about 30km in diameter and I find it fascinating that you can identify something that small from the back garden.

All the best 

Hello nickp87 and welcome to the site. Looks like we both started the same way, my first "proper" telescope was the 200P dob, then the phone mount on the eyepiece, then....

All the best 

4 hours ago, baggywrinkle said:

I go for 'Scenery' and raise it a bit and put in the filter.

Yep me too

4 hours ago, baggywrinkle said:

Seestar seems to fall over (not literally) when trying to find the Moon or Sun...why? when it is so good at finding DSO...

I've found that when it struggles to find either the sun or the moon, it's not level. So if it says to try manually, go back to the main page and see if it has the level alert.

+1 for the "I don't do processing" list. I have a boy for that ( he's 43 and strangely loves it). I might brighten it a bit but thats about it, I like the idea of the simpler the better so eeva is my thing. And with my squirrel brain, I am dreading a run of clear nights when I have to try and remember how the asiair works 🤔

Just now, Ags said:

Shopping, surely?

What, for more astro stuff? 🤣