M40

It's a very good telescope, but.....

The focuser and eyepiece is at the top of the tube and as such, your son may not be able to look through it unless standing on a chair or stool which us not ideal. It's quite large so is not something that your son will be able to manage on his own. Lastly storage needs to be considered.

On the plus side you will get some excellent results with this telescope. All the best

Tube rings were a definate ouch at £318 but I couldnt find any other supplier. Flocking material from flo was £7.50, hence why I kicked myself not getting a spare roll and I got the handle used at £9 I think it was so all told about £335. 

Plus side, it is now very much easier to carry so in my mind well worth doing.

I also noticed that the inside of the tube was a slate grey colour with what seemed flecks of white in the paint. I was a little concerned in case it was caused by condensation, but it wouldn't rub off so who knows what that is all about.

First off thanks to captain scarlet and his post Reverse Engineering the Skymax180 and to Martin Pyott and his youtube video supertune the planet killer. Both were a great source of information. 

A quick note about collimation. The secondary mirror position is fixed with no adjustment, so by shining a laser collimator through the eyepiece, the laser is going through the hole in the primary and reflected back to the collimator from the secondary. So this action tells you how aligned the secondary is to the eyepiece only. 

Adjustment is carried out on the primary only and this action centers the image at the eyepiece. I shall add to the post when I have sorted a good method for this, but I would say that unless you can fit the flocking material without knocking the primary mirror, expect to have to collimate the telescope. 

If the focuser section is left in place and flocking is not carried out, collimation should not be affected by fitting a handle.

So, the project, I turned this...

Into this.....

And at the same time I flocked the tube. As the existing dovetail conflicts with the tube rings it involves a touch of diy.

I  have tried to write it down in the steps I took, so I hope it makes sense to anyone thinking about it.

1. As I normally keep the telescope in the garage, brought it in to acclimatise it first, took about an hour.

2. Using an svbony sv121, I checked collimation of the secondary mirror before I started so I had an idea of what to expect, all good. Che king tbe primary mirror collimation is a slightly different process and once I have it sorted I will add to the topic but initially check using a defocused star.

3. I bought a pair of Orion Optics tube rings, ouch, simply put they are the only ones available unless you diy it. Check the tube rings provide a tight fit, mine didn't,  so I put some sticky back 1cm wide draught excluder on the tube rings and it worked a treat. 

4. Create a nice working space, you will need it.

5. If you are going to flock the tube, the flocking material will need rolling the other way so worth doing now. Note: If you are not flocking the tube, you do not need to remove the focuser section. 

6. Put a piece of tape on both ends of the tube and the meniscus lens and focuser sections. It makes it very easy when reinstating.

7. Have something handy to keep the screws in. 

8. Create a clear space for the meniscus section and the focuser section. The focuser section, in my case, requires 450mm clearance.

9. Remove the four screws at the meniscus lens end and remove the lens section. 

10. Remove the dovetail by unscrewing the two fixing screws. Note: the nuts and washers are not captured and as such you will need to hold them in place inside the tube to ensure nothing gets lost behind the mirror. 

11. Fit the tube rings and handle. I fitted the tube ring at focuser section end so that it covered one of the old dovetail screw holes. Fit the handle and then fit the second tube ring which is dimensioned by the handle. When you fit the handle, make sure the fixing screws are not too long so that they do not damage the tube.

If you are not flocking the tube, jump to number 17.

12. Place the tube so that it is standing on the meniscus end.

Remove the four screws and lift off the focuser section keeping it as straight and vertical as possible so as not to knock anything. Note: there is a lip on the inside of the focuser section so it will stay in position when all four screws are removed. Put the focuser section in a safe space.

13. I measured the flocking material at 350mm front to back and 665 internal diameter. I cut the material to 675mm so that it overlapped by 1cm.

14. At the meniscus end, the gap between end of tube and flocking material is about 19mm, to mark this, I used electrical tape as it was exactly the dimension I needed. Not wholely necessary, but just remember to remove the flocking material around the fixing holes.

15. Give yourself time, it can be a bit testing. At one point, I thought it would have been a wise move to buy a second piece of flocking material as you only get one go out of the length supplied, fortunately I did not need it.

16. Reinstate the focuser section. Check there are no challenges with the flocking material. 

17. Reinstate the meniscus section and again check the flocking material. 

18. Fit the dovetail.

19. Check collimation of the secondary. Check collimation of the primary using a defocused star.

20. Put the lens cap and finders back on and wait for the clouds to go.

21. This is the sum total of tools required 

It took about 3 hours beginning to end but that did include a dog walk in the middle.

During the focuser section removal and replacement, I did put mine out of collimation. There are various methods to collimate the telescope from purely using a defocused star, using a microdot torch, using a wholesky camera in the eyepiece section then following on with a defocused star and then there is the ocal collimator. When I have sorted the best way for me, I shall update the post according.

All the best and I hope that it proves useful to someone in the future. 

On 09/12/2023 at 20:47, LaurenceT said:

I'm just undecided which one to get, it's probably going to be one of the smaller ones as there is no scope to cover.

My story is that I built a pier and put the mount on it, threw a plastic builders bucket over the mount and covered it with a large tg365. Because I was covering the mount and bucket the tg365 needed to be large. Time goes by and the mount now still lives beneath the same, but now trimmed down tg365. The bucket is history and the whole sits within a sentry box type enclosure that allows a lot of air movement. Why the bucket? It kept the tg365 from touching the mount and allowed a level of air movement reducing the chances of condensation which seems to have worked as two years later all seems good.

If you get a smaller cover, you are then limited to what you can cover. Personally, I would go for the largest you can that keeps well clear of the floor. All the best. 

I've found the seestar will stop stacking if it can no longer plate solve the target and should save the last stacked image. The only time I had a challenge was when I chose a target that was the other side of a roof top and it couldn't find the start point. Do you think something could have blocked the target so it went instantly from plate solve to nothing? 

+1 for the baader zoom, definately my goto. Must admit, I bought the associated barlow at the same time and I've never used it. One other advantage of the baader zoom and eyepieces is that you can connect a dslr direct to them.

26 minutes ago, Giles_B said:

The tablet gets location data from other sources.

👍 @Giles_B does this mean you need to have a wifi connection or data for it to work?

looking at the blurb the only way I can turn off the gps in the tablet is by turning off location services, so I did and the app threw a tantrum.

Ps the simple act of taking the seestars outside took the clear night sky to 100% cloud in less than 5 minutes 🤦‍♂️ I managed 3 minutes on ic5146 before it stopped stacking. Classic

41 minutes ago, happy-kat said:

Just a thought the honor you mention on argos says Android 14 but in the questions and answers I see that it doesn't have GPS, to those with an S50 does this matter do you think please?

Interesting question and worth resolving. It shouldn't matter to the seestar but it may affect the apps performance. The seestar has an integral compass and doesn't need to have a continuous connection to your tablet/phone to work but the app needs to know where you are to provide best tonight and probably other stuff. I don't have anything to test it out on, but I might be able to pinch one of the grandkids phones over the weekend to try it. All the best.

Thats the thing, this is a snap I took with the phone together with a screen shot of a space . Com video the picture from my phone came out blue rather tgan the actual colour which was a little disappointing. 

Last night here on the South West coast we had an unusual red sky just before sunset. I have seen two explanations for this, the first being "it's pollution" and the second being due to a giant sunspot that is approx 800,000km in length. What do you think? I would like to think it was due to the Sun.

Just now, Mr Spock said:

Never throw the packing away! Apart from the missing bits you may need it if it has to go back 

Agreed, that is until it's all together and you know that all the bits are there, after that the packaging is in the bin, let's face it,  it looks great so its not going back is it 🤣

Not the best at networks so just throwing it out there, have you got a vpn on? I had a flag from the seestar the other day as it said that using a vpn can slow down the transfer rate and suggested it got turned off.

+1 for 10x50 binoculars, but always one to be different, I am going to throw in for good measure, a good zoom spotting scope to go with the binoculars.

Both can be tripod mounted so that goes on the shopping list too. The binoculars are always a good idea to help you find things then change up to the spotting scope, which will give you a surprisingly good view of the moon, Jupiter and Saturn. Both are also very good on scenery and some spotting scopes come with a mobile phone holder. All the best.

Hello AVRNJ and welcome to the site. 

+1 for everything that has been said above and Elp beat me on the seestar. It's very portable, uses technology thats easily shared and the images can be improved with additional and mostly free software. As Elp said, no good at all for planets, moon yes and sun yes. One caveat is that if he gets on with it, it could put you on the lip of that rabbit hole. All the best.

Hello Hingday37 and welcome to the site. Have a look through the diy observatory section of the site as I am sure there are a few diy builds in there somewhere. All the best and keep us updated 👍

Just noticed a youtube channel astrolavista has all three telescopes reviewed, I've not watched them yet but I've seen a few of his and they are easy to watch. All the best.

13 hours ago, SCANS said:

Yeah, if you're already fidgety, you probably don't want to check out Chris's reviews on AstroLaVista : https://youtu.be/_ii55pJqHwo  Personally, I'm hanging by a thread. I really don't need another scope, but I'm pretty much convinced that I should treat myself to one of these anyway.

 

Thanks for pointing this video out 👍 I also looked at his video where he compares the stellamira 125 with a tak fc100, well worth a watch. I didn't realise this telescope would be so good on Saturn and Jupiter, I will be giving it a go weather permitting. Here it is alongside it's smaller brother which is surprisingly a very similar weight....

I have the seestar which I think is an excellent device for what it can achieve and for ease of use. Ignoring cost the next thing is what can you see with it? The seestar is my only widefield telescope and is perfectly suited for just that and again, I would guess the others are similar but with different fields of view. I believe the dwarf has a wider field of view than the seestar so is likely more suited to the milky way than the seestar. 

Difficult to see how the seestar would capture the milky way with its current software, I suppose you would pick a target in a good position for that night and just let it go, it would be an interesting challenge. Hopefully someone with a dwarf or vaonis will offer their thoughts.

So I suppose it's like all telescopes, which one best suits what you would like to see. Maybe for the milky way, a dslr on a tracking mount would be the way to go? But I  will be trying for a milky way shot sooner or later. All the best.

13 hours ago, Ande said:

Oh, lastly, when I carefully pick the Seestar up, by gripping the tripod, I can feel a slight wobble in the ‘scope. I just assumed that this was a little play in the bearings, or gearing. Just wondering if this is par for the course, or if it should be totally free of any play?  I do screw it fairly firmly to the tripod, so it cannot be attributed to the way it is mounted

Mine wobbles too, but when I put it on the tripod, I just spin it so that it gets to the end of travel but I don't tighten it. Is there any chance it can be overtightened?

If I am using the asiair, once plate solve succeeds, I polar align, then just got on with it, but, I always ensure the finders are as close as I can get them so they are ready for the night I choose to do visual. I am fortunate in that the telescopes are stored with the finders in place; that leaves the only challenge being me in that I do have a habit of knocking the things when I'm putting it all away.

Hello Nick543 and welcome to the site.

And so the collection of adapters, cables, spares etc begins 🤣 enjoy the journey and ask away with any questions. All the best.

I moved my 200P dob on about 3 years ago now and I used it for visual and with a dslr but from memory I must say that I never noticed anything protuding into the image or through the eyepiece although I will never class myself as a serious imager. Hopefully if someone has noticed it they will let you know. All the best.

This flip mirror is the astro essentials device with micro adjuster. It's quite flexible with two T2 ports where the supplied adapters can be removed and your own used if necessary.

I plan to use it with either a low power or cross hair eyepiece in the flip side and a camera in the straight through, I think.....I have it set so no additional adapters are needed to get the two parfocal, but the weather has changed again so I can't confirm that yet. All the best.

Weather being what the weather is, I had the first chance in months to use a new flip mirror and I just couldnt put my finger on what was going wrong. Playing today, I tried sticking a laser collimator into the non straight through port with the beam going straight onto a mirror and it was miles out. A quick search found me an aged sgl post pointing out the mirror end stop adjusting screw. A quick adjustment and its sorted.

One thing though, I found the adjusting screw was very loose and will soon move. The screw is an M5 grub screw, I have now replaced this with an M5 machine screw and locknut. Nice and secure. 

Hope it helps someone in the future. All the best.

A samyang plus a few extras just popped up in the for sale section if you are interested, timing is everything 🤔