PeterStudz

I agree. When I got my old Newtonian I could just about focus on a distant chimney pot, but I wasn’t convinced that was far enough. In the end, the only way I could be sure, was to take it out at night, prop it up with some garden furniture (there wasn’t a mount) and try to focus on some random stars.

@AstralFields Good to know that it all works. For a hand controller as long as you have some bits of wire you don’t even need to spend any money. Some people have separated the motor from the box (with circuit board & switches), joining the two with long wires. You can see the two separated in the Teleskop version - the motor at one end and the box with the electronics and switches at the other. I thought of having a hand controller, but personally I haven’t found it to be a problem. I have a little volt meter across the motor terminals on my version. All I do is make sure it’s set to the correct number (for me 2.35 - 2.37 volts) at the beginning when I have to bend down anyway and keep it there. I rarely need to fiddle with it and often don’t touch the potentiometer for several sessions in a row. Although the good thing about making your own is that you can personalise things to your taste/requirements!

I think DSO were assumed because that’s where EAA and similar excels - eg it can enable you to view something that you can barely see, or not even see at all, visually through a telescope. And close to real time too, with just a short delay. EAA, especially simply attaching a camera to the eyepiece, is poor for live planetary views. Stacking, processing and editing is a very different matter. You’ll get better live views through an eyepiece. The moon is an exceptional example. Even in my little cheap and basic travel/grab-and-go Newtonian the moon looks far better than any image I’ve seen. And always gets a “wow… ohhh… arghhh” type comment. I have used a mobile attached to an eyepiece in order to point-out lunar features to a group, but then it’s back to the eyepiece. Of course with the planets and the moon there’s no need to get eyes dark adapted. In fact it’s a disadvantage. With two telescopes it could be useful and fun to have one for visual and one with a camera attached, but it’s a lot more work.

I’ve done a few “outreach” type events for young kids and to be honest DSO are tricky even with EAA. I also don’t think that many kids would find it that interesting and attention could go rapidly. Might work but involves much more effort to make it good - I think. For me the ones that have worked are the planets/lunar and solar. Eg I did a lunar, Jupiter and Saturn session with kids at my daughter’s school. They were 10-12 yr olds. Seeing the moon with its craters, Jupiter, its moons plus the GRS, Saturn, its ring and the Cassini division, Saturns moons… they were so excited I had trouble getting them away from the eyepiece. This was all done in twilight and to begin with you couldn’t even see Jupiter/Saturn naked eye which added to the magic. It was also easy to do and managed - ie it didn’t require much skill on my part. Even just lunar, on a good night, can be brilliant. But it helps to know your stuff. Eg names of craters/features, where the Apollo space craft landed etc. The other has been white light solar, with obvious safety precautions. Although most of the kids loved the safety briefing which I made a big issue, danger and all of that. Because it’s obviously all done in daytime, the kids can clearly see the telescope, eyepieces, focuser, how stuff works etc… which makes it all the more interesting. As a finale I showed them Venus in daylight. Again, you could not see it visually by eye - look up and there was nothing… look in the eyepiece and there was a bright planet Venus showing a phase.

PS - I/we (my daughter is much the same) could not just look at a screen. We like to see and observe targets through an eyepiece. I can see the attraction of going all out EAA, but it’s not for us. The smartphone images are an addition, sometimes just an afterthought, usually at the end of a session. Obviously the use of a screen will ruin dark adaptation!

I use an app on my iPhone - AstroShader - that live stacks and auto-aligns. No tracking necessary and you’ll see the image immediately on the phone screen without processing. Recent image of M13. And I’m in Bortle 7.

The ZWO Seestar S50 is new and interesting and worth considering if your son is OK with, and will enjoy, looking at things on a screen. There’s a general assumption that the younger generation all love tech. My 12 yr old daughter is well into mobiles, tablets and social media etc, but she’s not interested in something like the Seestar. She wants to observe through an eyepiece. Not sure on your transport. The Dobs that you listed are all surprisingly big. We have an Skywatcher 200p and with the back seats down it just fits into our car. Of course that means that only two of us can travel with the telescope. If you are in a light polluted area you might find that anything larger than a 200mm doesn’t give you much of an advantage for DSO - beyond that point it can just magnify the light pollution. The planets and the moon are a different matter as they are bright, so light pollution isn’t such an issue.

It depends on how far you want to go. I flocked and blackened everything when I did mine, including the back and sides of the secondary. For silver screw threads I slipped on a small section of black heat shrink tubing (for electrical insulation) which I had at home already. Just slipped over the tops of the threads where they stick out. Only worry about paint directly to metal is that it can flake off and you don’t want that ending up on your mirrors. Haven’t a clue if it makes a difference but it only took a few minutes and cost me nothing.

This is true. Might be worth pointing out but I think that there are other errors that are more significant than this. Although for practical visual purposes they probably don’t matter. Eg the EQ1/2 motor drive. I love its simplicity but its speed isn’t always constant - you can see this for yourself by placing a voltmeter over the motor terminals. I have one as a permanent fixture that I can switch on/off. For practical purposes it doesn’t matter but it will create drift. And some of these little cheap drives are better than others. Bit of pot luck there. Balance... Recently I took my magnetic balance weight off the end of my Dob and placed it onto the ground board for convenience. This just happened to be directly opposite the drive segment. Although weighing just 600g this was enough to cause my platform to slip to such an extent that it was no longer working properly. It took me ages to work out what was going on!

@AstralFields, interesting… thanks for this. Although after using my EQ platform extensively for almost about 19 months it’s more than accurate enough for me. Eg I can view targets like Mars at high magnification (x375 which is about as far as seeing & my 8” Dob will go), then pop inside for a short break, make a coffee, come back and Mars is still well within the FOV. I’ve even used it for simple imagining. As you say, it’s easy to make new segments, but I don’t think it’s worth fiddling with… if it works don’t touch it!

In my limited experience a dark sky is absolutely everything and the best telescope is the one that you have with you. For example, I took a little 4.5” Newt on a wobbly old mount to a Bortle 2 site. I had to get there via aircraft, so taking anything much larger wasn’t an option. But the views I got of the Swan, Triffid and Lagoon nebula were absolutely stunning. I cannot even see these from my Bortle 7 back garden through my 8” Dob (visually, whatever I do/try they simply aren’t there) and I really doubt any amount of aperture would make much difference. OK, it would have been splendid to take a big aperture with me but it simply wasn’t viable.

I check collimation before every session whatever I’m doing. I leave the “cap with a hole” on the focuser as a dust cap (small bit of masking tape over the hole). As I’m familiar with it, just by looking down the cap, I can immediately see if the telescope is collimated or not.

There are various suggested options of milk bottle washer, metal washer just a couple of milk bottle washers etc. I initial tried a 1mm washer + milk bottle washer but for my secondary I was short of space - the gap was small. So I went with two milk bottle washers like this. It has worked well since I did it roughly 2 years ago now. Link to article… https://stargazerslounge.com/applications/core/interface/file/attachment.php?id=136801

There are also alternatives to Starsense. I’ve never used Starsense so I’m not saying that this is better, but I can locate targets quick and easy using a phone app. For me it “just works” so what more do you want 😀. The app I use is called PS Align Pro. I think I it cost £2.99. Within that there’s a PushTo feature and I’ve been using it for about 2 yrs. The phone is strapped to the OTA with a cheap tripod adapter. I sync to at least one known star/target (there’s no other setting up, no levelling etc) and off I go. It will then locate targets within a low power eyepiece. There’s also another app that does similar called AstroHopper. Although I’ve never used it I think it’s free. For “tracking” I made an EQ platform for about £85. So for less than £100 you have tracking & PushTo. A simple EQ platform is fine up to a 12” Dob. Any bigger than that and it might be more complicated.

I have replaced my secondary screws with “Bobs Knobs” - well some cheaper thumb screws - and also did the milk bottle modification. This does make adjusting the secondary so much easier. But you don’t do it that often so it’s hard to say if it’s worth it for you. I had to take my 8” Dob apart so it was a quick, simple and cheap thing to do at the same time.

What size Newtonian do you have? A laser might be more useful for a large Dob but for my Skywatcher 8” and little 4.5” (travel, grab-and-go) I’ve never thought that I needed a laser. I have a good cheshire collimating eyepiece plus collimation cap (basically a cap with a hole in). Once the secondary has been done it really doesn’t need to be touched unless I’ve cleaned the mirrors. Occasionally I need to give the primary a tweak and here the “cap with the hole in” does the job. Never needed to adjust anything in the dark. When I’ve taken the 8” Dob in the car I’ve been surprised to see that the collimation didn’t shift at all. But if it did it would really have just been the primary. When I took the 4.5” abroad which involved a 1.5 hours car journey, 4hr flight, 2 hours in a taxi, dragging the case/telescope over cobbled streets plus a ferry journey by sea, I was very surprised to find that collimation had not shifted one bit. In fact I was a bit disappointed as I’d taken by collimation tools with me and was ready for collimation action. Instead I settled down for a beer. Personally I wouldn’t rush out and buy anything until you find out what works best for you.

I’d be more than happy with that! I’ve been hoping to just see Mercury, but from my garden it’s obscured by housing and/or trees. I’d thought of driving somewhere but when it’s been clear in the evening I’ve been busy… one day!

Skywatcher 200p Dob on DIY EQ platform. Smartphone app PS-Align-Pro as a PushTo finder. Southampton urban garden, Bortle 7. 30th - 31st March 2024. Since starting out just over 3 years ago I’ve really valued and found the observation reports on this site extremely useful. Other people’s that is, as I’m not great at writing these - eg it takes me forever. And not just those that are full of lists from a totally successful night! This was my first long/proper night session this year (the weather really has been pants) and it showed as I was a bit rusty. Eg caps got mislaid, eyepieces put in odd places. I couldn’t work out why caps were ending up on the ground, potentially cap-fatal as the dog enjoys chewing these. That’s until I discovered a hole in the pocket of my observing hoody! It was a mild night for the time of year and I didn’t need to wrap up. There did not seem to be a dew problem, so I elected not to use my main dew shield, just one on the finder. Or maybe I was just being a bit lazy. It all started late and my daughter (who often takes part) had gone to bed, which was a bit of a shame. M81 & M82. At this time of year in a good patch of sky from my garden. I also enjoy getting both in the same FOV. M82 bright enough to show some detail. As I’m familiar with these two I could tell conditions were decent with good transparency. These two galaxies plus Andromeda are the only galaxies I’ve been able to see from my light polluted back garden. M51 - I didn’t have much of a plan for the night, but as conditions didn’t seem bad I decided to have a go at M51. So far I’ve never been able to see this. I’d already aligned to a couple of stars plus M81 so I was confident of being in the right place. Always a worry if something is hard to see. With a low power eyepiece I thought I could see something but wasn’t sure. However, using a 15mm a could (almost immediately) spot the main core and the core of its companion. Averted vision and I could see some “fuzz” around the main core too which formed a couple of very faint arcs. I know it’s not much but I was please with this. I spent some time on M51, but things deteriorated when some thin localised and patchy high cloud moved in. So I decided to move on. Maybe return later. M3 - I do like globulars and I hadn’t seen this for almost a year. I can easily see this in my finder and upping the power started to resolve some stars. When I see these they start to “twinkle” in and out of view which reminds me of a glitter ball. I assume that this is due to atmospherics. At x240 it fills much of the FOV, the EQ platform keeping it central, which makes things more relaxing. The more relaxed the more I see. Then I came up with a problem. My trusty EQ platform started to slip. I’ve had this for 20 months now and apart from when I initially set it up (had to really tighten the drive shaft connection) it has never slipped. Thinking things could have loosened up after not using it for a while I got some allen keys out and started to fiddle about, get on my hands and knees, in the dark. Now, don’t try something as it’s asking for problems and could possibly just make things worse. I’m not doing it again! Anyway, this did not fixed the issue. However, I’d almost given up when I found the problem. As the targets were relatively high I’d taken the balance weight off the back of the OTA and placed it onto the ground board (the circular part) of my Dob. base. This was at the opposite side of the drive shaft and as its friction driven was enough to put it off-balance, causing the shaft to slip! Just shows that it needs to be relatively well balanced. M13 - By the time I sorted that out M13 (normally a summer target for me) was high enough to be worth a look. Moreover, the patchy thin cloud had dispersed. A bit brighter and seemingly larger than M3 it is a nice sight. Again, I changed eyepieces around and enjoyed the view. M92 - I kept the glob theme going by checking out M92. Again, enjoyable, with stars twinkling at higher powers. Appears more dense at its core than M3 or M13. M53 - After that a wild card of the globular M53. First time that I’ve tried to view this and it was faint. Whatever I tired I could not resolve any stars and it remained a fuzzy patch. Having said that it was relatively low and not in a good section of my night sky. The moon was due up soon and I was feeling tired so I decided to take a couple of smartphone snaps (M3 & M13) using the AstroShader app which I still need practice with. Then call it a night. The results can be seen via the link below. All in all a good session. I prefer to concentrate on just a few targets and this was more than enough for me. I enjoy being outside and nighttime is special. Although occasionally a bit of an effort for me to get going, once I’m out I often don’t want to go back in! The picture was taken as I was packing up. Moon in the background shining through tree branches. Smartphone snaps…

Personally I’m not a fan of sticking/glueing things onto a telescope - never got it to work well enough. I’m more happy with getting a power tool out and drilling some holes.

You could be right. And maybe why distortions at the edge were more noticeable. AstroShader provides a live preview and although in some ways this is nice and useful it does mean that it can be difficult to focus. Depending on settings it can take a number of seconds before you see the result of a focus change on the screen. Even getting focus right on one target and moving to another requires a tweak in focus. However, there’s probably an easier/better way. Might be worth posting around with everything during daylight eg when doing some solar.

Snaps of globular clusters M3 and M13 taken at the end of an observational session. I find globulars especially tricky with a smartphone. I’m pleased with M3. M13 had some distortions near the edges so has been cropped a bit more than I’d like. The app I’ve used - AstroShader - is getting good and is now so simple. Although haven’t quite got the hang of the settings. I’m not an imager. These are straight out of the app, some simple editing & crop in the stock camera app… no processing. I might try and get a bit more out of them at a later date, eg when I’m bored sitting on the train! The “tracking” is just a DIY EQ platform, but it can be used without. Skywatcher 200p Dob on DIY EQ platform. Southampton urban garden, Bortle 7. BST StarGuider 15mm. iPhone 14 Pro on no-brand smartphone adapter. Captured via AstroShader - ISO 1424, 40 exposures of 6 seconds each - for a total of 4mins. Longer is possible but I was getting bored with that! Observation Report…

First long night session of the year for me and fantastic to be outside again… it has been poor! Southampton, Bortle 7, Sky-Watcher 200p Dob. Very mild for the time of year with no need to wrap up. Started off with M81/82 - always geat, transparency OK, but some thin high level cloud about. Then onto M51 where, for the first time, I could actually see something! After that a globular fest:- M3, M13, M92 & M53 (M3 & M13 surprisingly good) before the moon washed things out and I called it a night. For me a lot of targets. I often just stick to 2 or 3. I’ll try and do a report later. Just added some smartphone snaps of M3 & M13 here…

I have a similar focuser on my little Skywatcher Skyhawk 1145p (114mm Newtonian) which I do like for grab-and-go plus travel. I did take the focuser apart and add some Teflon tape to the draw tube which certainly improved it. Also added some metal inserts for the focuser thumb screws. Now it’s much better but like you I’ve thought of a focuser upgrade. I’ve seen this which seems to be all metal and MIGHT be better. But can’t be certain and you are taking a risk. You’d also need to drill some holes in the OTA. https://amzn.eu/d/06wkU76 https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005178497054.html

You aren’t the only one. It does take time and patience. When I started out (only a few years ago) I was blessed with a fine spell - I assure you that they do exist - and for ~3 months most night were clear. So much so that I was literally getting exhausted from lack of sleep. I also had a number of disappointing sessions but got there in the end. However, the good nights became more frequent and on some I was so chuffed with what I’d seen and how things went that I found it hard to sleep, despite being very tired! If it was that easy I would not find it so much fun! It might also be worth writing this kind of thing in the “observing - reports” section. It doesn’t need to be a blinding success or a massive list of “what I saw” to be useful. When I started out this was my goto section of this site. Well, it still is. And good luck… I’m sure it’ll all work out in the end.

From my experience (OK, limited to many on here) I think that these couple of sentences could apply to all areas of astronomy. And not just DIY. All looks great and well done!