PeterStudz

Good question. I’m very short-sighted. In the past I use to be able to get glass lenses for my spectacles. In fact I preferred glass, as compared to plastic it was thinner (I have to pay a lot more for thinner plastic lenses), as they were thinner they were lighter, and they didn’t scratch as easily. I assume glass became obsolete for safety reasons.

Thanks for posting that @Louis D… very interesting.

Yes, I’ve had one for a few years. Doesn’t do anything that I can see for light pollution - I’m in Bortle 7. Although strangely it does bring out granulation and sunspot details when doing solar.

Unless you know the individual very well then you really are generalising. And knowing them well from a brief post on a forum isn’t possible, so you go on what they’ve said. People do have different requirements and lives. I first went with a small grab and go but wish I hadn’t. Then got an 8” Dob and love it. And I’m no spring chicken, with a weak knee (dislocated 5 times now) and I find moving the Dob from my house to garden very easy. I’ve also taken it in the car for outreach events and it’s been great. Not to say that the “grab and go” was wasted/sold. It’s now our holiday telescope as I can take it as hand luggage on an aircraft (tripod in hold). That’s obviously rather tricky with an 8” Dob. So if I was travelling a lot then the Dob would be rather useless.

I rather like it too. And unlike most of my astronomy gear that my other-half thinks looks “ugly” or “shouldn’t be in the house” this stool is an exception and is more than accepted as part of the furniture. Eg we also use it as a drawing/art stool.

You can’t have too many 😀

I Agree! There’s no contest. Eg the Dob base for my 8” that I made out of cheap plywood from Wicks is far more stable and more useable than the little 4.5” Newt that I have on a EQ5 steel tripod. The stability is so important as I can focus without wobbles. And it’s rock solid in a wind, unlike something on a tripod. As for height. I’m 6ft tall and my 8 yr old daughter (no 12) is somewhat shorter. Easy to get around with an adjustable stool. I got this for £10 via Gumtree. She stands and I (being lazy and old) sit

All looks great and what a wonderful new telescope. Although I’m kind of sad that there’s no more 200p - end on an era! I always enjoyed seeing what you were doing with that as I obviously have one too.

I agree with @dweller25. I have an 8” Dob and it does give good views of the planets, better than the two telescopes mentioned. For planets you don’t really need GoTo as they are bright and easy to find. But you could argue that tracking is useful for planetary. GoTo does make finding DSO easy but then I enjoy finding them myself and also use a smartphone app to help.

We do take some skills (even small skills) for granted. Eg I’ve noticed how some children initially struggled to look through an eyepiece, especially something with a narrow FOV. I’ve had frustrated comments like “I can’t see anything? It’s just black”. But after a few goes, or change to a less “challenging” eyepiece, they usually get there. I’ve even had a few try and look down the far end of the Dob, trying to look through the primary mirror, thinking that with all telescopes you look through the far end. But it’s not surprising given that when a telescope is shown in the media it’s nearly always a reflector.

Sounds good… brave to give that a go at this time of year. But what’s not to like! The advantage with camping tent/no tent is that eyes are adapted to the dark from the word go. Well, as long as someone doesn’t switch a torch on! Another thing my daughter has done when it’s a bit cold to camp outside is to “camp” downstairs. Sometimes with a friend for a sleepover. I’ve set the telescope outside and come down at some point during the night so that we can look at the sky. Again, eyes are use to the dark without trying.

I agree with @Jules Tohpipi that it sounds like something in the Celestron StarSense range would be a safe bet.

Yes, indeed. I also go through a lengthy safety briefing which kids often seem to enjoy. Usually I’ll get loads of questions before even getting near an eyepiece which surprises me.

I started out when my then 8yr old daughter (she’s now 12) expressed an interested in astronomy and wanted to get a telescope. There’s quite a difference between 8 & 5 yrs old but some of what we went through might help. At the time I thought this would be a great thing to do together, and so it has been, but it’s been a lot of effort, work, fun, rewards and the occasional disappointments. You need to have patience in this hobby and kids (some adults too) aren’t skilled at this! I’m almost tempted to write up our experience as I find I’m often repeating myself but it’s finding the time. So a few things we’ve learnt… Try and find out what they are into. This can be surprisingly difficult as both being beginners you have little idea what to expect. Eg the ZWO Seestar smart telescope has been mentioned, but my daughter has virtually no interested in seeing stuff on a screen. She wants to see things herself through an eyepiece. So much so that she calls astrophotography “those fake pictures”. Others are obviously different. It’s not something that a young child can easily do themselves - sticking them out in the garden and leaving them is unlikely to work until they are older. It’s something that you do together. For us this is ideal, but maybe not for everyone. Kids have very short attention spans. Getting them to sit still in the garden, get their eyes use to the dark etc, when it’s freezing cold (best time of year for astronomy tends to be winter, spring & late autumn) isn’t going to work. We got around this by making “astronomy” an event. Eg my daughter loves camping. So on clear nights during the warmer months we’d camp in the garden (no tent), look for shooting stars, scan the sky with binoculars, learn the constellations, toast marshmallows, drink hot chocolate, listen out for foxes, hedgehogs, the dawn chorus... The telescope being the icing on the cake. I can remember one such camping night when we were both very much beginners and in the end just looking/finding one target (the Ring Nebula). We tried to find the likes of the Dumbbell and failed but it didn’t matter as we had so much else going on. Alice has also had friends who are interested over for “astronomy sleepovers” and these have always gone well. We also do solar and after a night camping/astronomy, breakfast on the outdoor stove, we’ve observed the sun too. These type of things have proved great fun. Of course you could do much of this without a telescope but it just would not be the same. Oh… with obvious precautions solar has been great. Obviously you can do this in the day when it can actually be warm, have a BBQ etc which makes things a lot easier. After gaining experience here we were even able to view a couple of the planets during daylight too - Venus and Jupiter. Hope that helps and good luck!

Somewhere. And a still have a few down my shed. Will see what I can do!

These are great and it makes me wish I had such a setup. love the video too. In my opinion there should be more smartphone “at the eyepiece” videos. Well, any type of smartphone astrophotography/astroanimations!

If like the Omegon it’s also possible that they are too wide/thick for the weight of your Dob and are slipping. As @Orange Smartie my arcs are relatively grippy from all of the scratches from the filing. You could try and rough-up the surface with a fine file.

Good point which I’d forgotten. I had to do mine up very tight (and I needed to use two grub screws on each side of the flexible link) in order to ensure it didn’t slip.

@Jimmy81 - the gap between my top & bottom board is 58mm (about the same) and I don’t have any issues, so I doubt it’s that. I use mine with an 8” Dob, although my homemade base is “solid” and as such has some weight to it. I think that slipping is a possibility. Is your battery OK and have you tried a fresh one? The drives can go through these little 9v batteries quite fast. Mine would struggle as the battery drained. In the end I actually swapped mine and rigged a more substantial rechargeable unit.

I have a feeling that it’s not unusual for some of these types of reflectors to have a tube that isn’t perfectly cylindrical. Especially if made of metal that’s rolled into a tube and joined with a seam. If I look closely (it was more obvious when I took it apart for flocking) at my SkyWatcher 200p Dob it isn’t perfectly cylindrical too. But then as a Dob it doesn’t need to be. @wookie1965solution looks ideal as it means you can loosen the bolts far enough that it won’t matter if the tube is perfectly cylindrical or not.

As someone on here said - “Astronomy is a hobby that rewards patience” - and from my experience this is very true and something I often repeat to others starting out. There’s so much more to astronomy than the gas giants and for me Jupiter and especially Saturn, are now way past their best anyway. Time to move on. And I’m looking forward to Saturns rings edge on - it’s a special event and happens roughly every 14/15 yrs I think. I’ve never seen it. I rushed and bought something that wasn’t really suitable. Then I waited. After a couple of months I found someone who was giving away an 8” Dob for free. Sure, it needed some work, but I enjoyed that. Now I have something that’s ideal for me. If only I had some patience at the start 😀

Even at low magnification, on the likes of nebulae, globulars & galaxies, you’ll be able to relax and let your eyes notice more details. At least that’s my experience.

@Orange Smartie Looks great! I chopped/rounded the ends off my arcs as during testing my daughter managed to catch her ankles even though I told her to watch out. And as you say they aren’t necessary and don’t do anything.

Well done! And welcome to the club😃. For mine it’s bang when the motor is running at approximately half speed. Could well be the diameter of the shafts. I’m sure it can be shorted.

If I don’t keep my eyepieces slightly above outside temperature they can (especially on some nights) dew up. This can just be from the heat around your eye as you look into the eyepiece. For me the solution has been to keep the ones I’m using for the night in the long straight-through pocket of my observing hoodie. It’s simple and it works. For me an “integrated solution” just wouldn’t work. Although you could argue that my big pocket is integrated.