M40

Hello Andy and welcome to the site. Have a look around to see what people are using and what they are achieving, it may give you a few ideas on a direction you may like to go. On the site there is a diy observatory section that has a variety of builds that may help with storage of a similar telescope to your old one if that is possible for you. All the best and give us a few pointers on budget, what you would like to see or image.

@Beardy30 managed to get outside tonight for a few hours, so going back to your original question of what is it like for visual, this telescope has made me do something I've not done for at least four years and that is to go and get the 2.25x barlow and bolt it to the zoom. It gave an excellent view of Jupiter. I then jumped around a bit and swapped the eyepieces a few times to see how it performed; it split the doubles Castor and Mizar with ease, M45 excellent.

I finished by throwing in a zwo asi385mc and neodymium filter and took a simple screen grab of Jupiter.

Loved the thumb screw enabling the focuser to be rotated. One point to consider is that this is a lightweight but long telescope so you will need a solid mount to avoid vibration. 

Since I got mine I've managed a whole one night out with the thing and I chose to do a touch of eea with it. I was well pleased with the results from what was a cloudy bright night.

I'm really hoping to get out whilst Jupiter is still in a good position but I think time and the weather is against it. 

What I can say is that it is very light for its size, works very well on an heq5 and I can't wait for a few clear nights.

Lots out there on the bigger brighter shiny stuff so how about something slightly less glamorous?  Something on the solar system moons, dwarf and minor planets? What can seen tonight? All the best and let us know what you choose.

I use those green rings to set home position only and then only if I want to check the marks Ihave made. I have never used them for polar alignment as the later reticule does not have the small polaris circle so the process is not required (going to sit and wait now to be told I have been doing it wrong 🤣). Out of interest, I always polar align with the telescope in position.

Here is a very poor screenshot of new (on left) and old reticules.

LandyJon's image above shows where to position polaris on the reticule. I think bosun21 mentioned above that you can turn the polar scope in the mount so the reticule is positioned correctly, the polar scope can also be focused.

During the setting up of the app or handset, ensure that your precise location and local time is set correctly, in particular ensure the date is installed correctly.

After polar alignment, do at least a two star alignment. On going to the first star it's likely to be out so just use the handset or app to centre the star in the eyepiece, hopefully the second star alignment will be close or spot on. Let us know how you get on.

11 hours ago, bosun21 said:

Make sure that the mount and handset are powered up to command the mount to go to the home position which is found in the utility menu. Then set everything I said above to find the home position and switch the power off as instructed. This allows the mount to remember the home position so you need to set the home position only once.

Great point there from bosun21 which I had missed. By getting the mount to drive to its home position from the app or handset, then setting the mount to the marked lines you are now at the mount home position.

11 hours ago, Obsi said:

But I still don't know how to polar align this or more precisely how I get that clock in the scope perfectly aligned with 0 beeing up and 6 down.

Polar alignment is all about getting polaris in the correct position on the polar scope. Ignoring any numbers on the polar scope, start by getting polaris in the field of view of the polar scope. Then using an app or the handset find where polaris should be on the reticule and aim for that. 

Ahh, those green rings,  with you.

This is my routine and how I use those rings. You will need a bubble level and a pencil.

Plonk the mount on the tripod and level it. Without the telescope or weights fitted, extend the weight bar, by releasing the clutch, rotate the mount so that the weight bar is horizontal, use the bubble. When it is level, set the appropriate scale to 6 or 18 and lock the scale in position. Rotate the head to show 12 or 24 and lock in position. Using the pencil, mark a line on the body of the mount and on the adjacent part of the head. Now do the same with the other axis and draw a line on the mount. This enables you to quickly return to this position at start up and after polar alignment.

This sets the moving part of the mount to its home position, not polar algnment. Polar alignment sets the position of the fixed part of the mount so that the fixed part of the mount is pointing towards polaris.

When you do polar alignment, you will need to rotate the head 90' so that you can see through the polar scope, when you are finished rotate the mount so that the lines are lined up.

As you say, one of the rings can be locked, the other can only be locked in one position, no idea why, there is probably a good reason.

So your steps are, level the tripod, set the mount to its home position, polar align, set the mount to its home position. Just a bit of info, when you have polar aligned, physically look at the polar scope position and spin the head in all ways. The polar scope position does not move. Polar alignment is setting the fixed part of the mount.

All the best and hope it makes some sort of sense.

Hello Obsi and welcome to the site. 

First off, be assured that you are not alone with the learning curve, so ask away.

Not sure what you mean by green ring, but my heq5 is an old version now so hopefully someone will jump in.

Both the dec and ra axis adjustment bolts operate in the same way, you have to loosen one of the pair and tighten with the other, this will move yhe mount in the direction of the tightening bolt. Small adjustments allow small movements of the mount.

Where you say the mount sticks sometimes, you may have overtightened the mount fixing bolt, it needs to be tight but not so tight you dont get any movement.

Ignore the numbers on the polar scope and just treat it like a clock face. Regardless of the position of the numbers, just think that 12 is at the top so if the polar time you are looking for is 7 o'clock,  just aim to get polaris at the 7 o'clock posion.

The polar scope brightness can be adjusted in the app or the handset, aim for a level where it is bright enough for you to see the dial but not so bright that you can't see Polaris.

There are no short cuts unfortunately so each time you move the mount you will need to polar align. You can make it slightly quicker by when you find your mount position and have levelled it, mark the position of the tripod on the floor, leave the legs extended so you can return the mount to exactly the same place.

All the best and hope it helps.

I look at the seestar as being a widefield telescope so the simple answer, imo, is galaxies. If you use the fov calculator and stick in your telescope and camera combo and choose for example M51, then add the seestar, you will see that your telescope gives a much better fov. I have lots of eea pictures that the seestar just couldn't do. At the same time, the seestar has enabled me to get things like nebula that I never thought I would ever get.

Here us a belimo one..... https://www.belimo.com/uk/shop/en_GB/p?code=ZG-AF

There is a massive range of stuff so there should be something there, your biggest challenge will be matching the stroke of the actuator to suit your door flap. If you can arrange your doorflap to rotate on a spindle, then using these actuators would become a lot easier for you as these actuators are primarily designed to drive spindles. 

All the best

A great build and fits in with it's surroundings perfectly, take a virtual pat on the back.

Looking at your drop down door conundrum, do a search for belimo damper actuator and linkage kits. They are basically rotary actuators which accept a rod type linkage so your flap can be operated in a raise lower arrangement. 

All the best 

Hello Jim and welcome to the site. 

Here is an aged post on this topic that may give you a couple of pointers........

All the best 

If it's the heq5 tripod you have, you will need one of these.....

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/sky-watcher-mount-accessories/astro-essentials-3-8-photo-adapter-for-heq5-az5-tripod.html

All the best 

Hello sisaymen and welcome to tge site. Here is a link to FLO selection of books that may help..

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/books/page/1/

All the best

On 01/02/2024 at 20:11, Monzilla said:

Just one quick question,  power packs...

I don't want to be carrying around a large battery or anything larger than a mobile phone. Can anyone provide a link to a rechargeable  power pack/bank that will work for this az go2 mount for the 127 mak? 

I don't have this but it has good reviews....

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/batteries-powerpacks/celestron-6-1-ah-powertank-lithium-lt.html

All the best and welcome to the site

Just had a quick look. The app is version 1.14.0 and the seestar firmware is 2.25. Don't want it too easy do we 🤪

Hello and welcome to the site. Have a look around and ask away with any quesions. And in the wise words of FLO, clear skies....eventually 😁

Must admit that I wouldn't.  The blurb describes it as a usb charge port so I think I would get a power pack for your other stuff. All the best.

Challenging conditions with high clouds and a full moon. All taken with a Stellamira 125, zwo asi 290MM, asiair and heq5. 

NGC 2276, approx 120 million light years away, 31 x 10 seconds

NGC 7678, approx 130 million light years away,  35 x 10 seconds

NGC 7753, approx 272 million light years away,  44 x 10 seconds

And something different, Uranus and 3 or 4 of its moons, single shot.

Caldwell 19/ IC 5146 the cocoon nebula. 10 minutes of 10 sec frames with integral filter, simple screen grab of the stacked image

How about looking at it this way, the skymax127, although giving you a similar field of view to the dobs, you now have goto.

The st102, also gives you goto but opens the door, if you add at a later date something like the zwo 462mm, the option of eeva.

So I suppose it's what do you see yourself doing in the future.

Many thanks Curtis, always good to know what else is out there.

Another 125mm had its first light tonight. Very mucky out there but had to play

NGC 7662 - the blue snowball nebula, possibly the wrong target for the seestar 🤣

Hello janemc40 and welcome to the site.

My guess is that you have seen either the ISS or one of other larger satellites that are floating around up there. Looking at Stellarium, the ISS went over at about 18.00 tonight, no idea if it was something you could see from your location so might be worth looking at something like stellarium to see if you can pin point it.

All the best