Ian McCallum

It's about 63.5mm in diameter. Would that fit at all? 🤔

I bid on and won this old Prinz Astral 500, from eBay. I didn't look carefully enough at the advert to realise that there was no tube rings or tripod head. I've got the experience to clean the front objective lens, etc. Is it worth doing up? I know that the circle T Japanese optics are supposed to be really good.

I got this from eBay. Sorry if I outbid anyone from this forum. 🙄 Perhaps I should have left it for someone else... 🤔 I should have looked closer at the advert, as it didn't come with a tripod head or tube rings. But I'm sure it can do something with it...

I couldn't be bothered setting up the imaging rig this evening, so just did some visual observering with my two Sky-Watcher refractors. I tried them on Jupiter, then moved on to M45.

Great at stopping dust ingress?🤔😂

A cracking image, from an achromat!😮

These arrived today, courtesy of @SzabiB. I bought a friend a second hand Celestron Firstscope 76mm Dobsonian from eBay, which was supplied with awful H and SR type eyepieces. I bought these Sky-Watcher eyepieces, as these will be an improvement for him.

It's a Sky-Watcher 4.5 inch Newtonian reflector on a German equatorial mount.

Worth a punt. Prior to buying the same filter, I had no experience on opening up a Baader filter draw - fast learning curve.😂

Got these from Auntie @FLO, late this afternoon...

I've got a few second hand items, bought from members on here.👍

I've been using Astroberry on the RPi 4 with 2GB of RAM, as that's all that was available at the time. Again, I'm loathed to throw more money at AP.

Nah, I'm happy with what I've got.😉

Yep, doesn't require batteries, tricky software, etc. 😉

You're right, getting the motivation to move is the hardest part. That and chasing software issues for hours, doesn't help either...

Thanks for everyone's input.👍 I've ordered a AZ5 mount head and adapter for my EQ5 tripod, so that I can use my refractors on an Alt-Az mount for visual use. My two ZWO cameras will be put back in the boxes, till I get the AP notion again...

I don't know if you can get some heatshrink sleeving over it?

That happened to me, when I bought a TinySA spectrum analyser.🙄

I still have the Dob and won't part with it, as it has sentimental value - My late mum looked through that telescope at Venus and Arcturus.

I've already got a converted SW 9x50 finderscope, that works really well with the ZWO ASI120MM mini. I'd go back to purely observing, so no more AP, other than perhaps the smartphone upto an eyepiece.

The flowerpots sounds like a sound idea, I'd probably go for the terracotta type. My initial plan was to sell the two ZWO cameras and buy a SW AZ5 head with an adapter to fit my existing tripod legs. That way, I can still have my goto mount ability, but also the ease of Alt-Az. I'm not intending to part with my telescopes, as I like them all!

I've done that in the past, but want to make the markings a bit more permanent. I tend to use the tripod on grass, rather than concrete, as the grass is a bit further away from the buildings, so therefore gives me a little more sky to work with, etc. Most neighbours are okay and know that I do astronomy. In the past, I've even shown them the moon through my 8" Dob.

I share a small communal back garden with 3 other neighbours, as I live in a ground floor flat (4-in-a-block). At most, I can only see about 90 degrees of the sky, from East to South.

Regarding eyepieces, I've got the full BST StarGuider series which should cover all eventualities...

I'm at a point where I no longer want to go further into the rabbit hole that is astrophotography, due to costs of getting more equipment. Whilst I can do AP on a budget, I find that the time required to set up the mount, polar align, connect all the gear and run the software (allowing for computer problems) is killing the hobby for me. I'm tempted to go back to just purely visual observing. I could have just stuck with my SW 200P Dob and still been happy, but with more money in my pocket. I felt drawn to refractors, so got a 2nd hand SW Evostar 120. That required a better mount and tripod than I had at the time, so I bought an SW EQ5 Deluxe mount. I wanted to motorise the mount, so I got a SW Enhanced Dual-Axis motor drive kit. This allowed my to do some rudimentary AP, using the ST4 port on the hand controller. I then bought a ZWO ASI120MM mini guide camera, but I found that I didn't like ST4 guiding. I then decided that the EQ5 Synscan Pro Goto upgrade kit was the way to go. That certainly made improvements, as did getting a small RPi to do standalone stuff, very clever stuff! I thought that a one shot colour camera would be even better, so I got the ZWO ASI224MC one. It's gave me some good images, over the time I've had it. I recently bought another refractor - a SW ST120 OTA, for wider views of DSO than can be obtained through my SW Evostar 120. The idea was to do DSO imaging with the ST120, along with a Baader Contrast Booster filter attached to the from of the ASI224MC. A mixture of poor weather, technical limitations of the budget equipment and my own limitations, have caused my to pause for the moment and reconsider... I'm thinking of selling the cameras and going to back to purely visual, but getting an AZ5 mount for the existing tripod (with adapter).