PeterStudz

1 hour ago, Stu1smartcookie said:

I really dont know why i messed around in the first place !!!! 

Thanks again 

Fiddling with collimation when it isn’t necessary and making it worse is something that I’m sure everyone with a Newtonian has done at some point. I certainly have. And it’s often a sign that the weather is cloudy.

Sometimes you get complete beginners launching into it, getting in a mess, then coming on here when it really wasn’t necessary… first just get your new toy out under the stars. Before trying to fix a problem that might not exist!

Worth searching the site. Eg I found this which might be helpful. One other point that is mentioned in the link… I’d seriously considered a decent tripod (like the skywatcher steel tripod) when near the limit of the mount.

The tube I used was meant for model aircraft - fuel supply to a glow-plug engines - from the days when I made model planes. It’s flexible but quite stiff. If you put the slow-motion cable back on, tighten the thumb screw, and move it back and forth you should see if it works. 

In fact the idea came via someone else and was used to help prevent fixings vibrating loose from running model engines. 

If you mean the locking screws working loose then it’s a common problem. 

I solved it by putting a small section of plastic tubing over the tread of the thumb screws. Just long enough so that when you tighten the screw it compresses the tube a little. That extra friction prevents the thumb screw moving and working loose. 
 

Yes, I saw and thought about the acrylic sheet thing. I can see how it would be easier if trying to flock within a narrow tube. But for my 8” Dob it was so easy and straightforward to just stick it down the length of the whole tube I couldn’t see any benefit. I also flocked the inside of the focuser drawtube. Not sure if that was necessary but it was so quick and easy I thought that I might as well try. 

I flocked my 8” Dob 2 years ago when I was still very much a beginner. For me it was far easier than I thought and after I’d stripped the tube down the actual flocking took under a couple of hours. In fact I had the whole thing back together, collimated and observing the moon as it got dark. 
 

I did the whole tube in 3 sections following the advice of someone on here. Although I found a head-torch useful when sticking the sections down. 

I also prefer the first softer image. To me, having done mostly visual, it just looks far more natural. I’ve been through the “over sharpening” thing in mobile imaging where I think it’s even easier to get caught-up in and where you are very much on your own. 

I have a NeXYZ but for me (we are all different) I found it over engineered, heavy and in practice no better than a simple, much lighter £10 adapter. Other than the moon I’ve taken smartphone snaps of…

The Sun

The International Space Station passing the sun

Jupiter

Saturn

Mars

Venus

Neptune

Uranus 

Orion Nebula

Various Star Clusters

A Comet

The Ring Nebula 

Dumbbell Nebula

Various Globular Clusters

Various Galaxies

Probably forgotten something. Basically everything that you can see at the eyepiece. I find it useful to record my observations and occasionally a bit of fun processing especially on those far too many cloudy nights. 
 

To get an idea of what people are doing have you had a look at the “Imaging - Smartphone / Tablets” on this site…

https://stargazerslounge.com/forum/279-imaging-smartphone-tablets/

Collimation issues can be seen by doing a star test. A beginner can do that too.

From experience my 8” Dob takes about 50mins to fully cool. I generally allow 1hour but that doesn’t mean I don’t look/observe before hand. For a start it’s useful to be able to learn and recognise tube currents.

A sky looking clear does NOT mean good seeing. You can have a crystal clear sky and very poor seeing. Sometimes you can judge poor seeing by stars “twinkling”. Sometimes not. Poor seeing is often caused by the jetstream which is 5-7 miles above the earth’s surface. It’s invisible naked eye. 

You need a night of good seeing to do a star test. Otherwise it’ll appear “fuzzy/wobbly”. If a star that’s high in the sky is heavily twinkling then don’t do a star test. Or maybe give it a go in order to practice, learn & recognise poor seeing. 

10 minutes ago, dweller25 said:

@DAT

A star test will immediately tell you if your scope is collimated or not.

But good star test or not if looks like cotton wool and is unstable then your scope is either not cooled down or you have a poor quality sky.

My scope is perfectly collimated and I know when it’s fully cooled, so if the views are poor - which they frequently are for me as I live just north of Manchester, then I know the sky quality is poor.

This ⬆️. A star test is essential and something you should learn to do.

8 minutes ago, DAT said:

I think it must be more of a collimation issue otherwise I assume the picture would not be ok on the 30mm ep. At some point I will take up someone’s kind offer of help and get to the bottom of it. For the meantime I just have to keep trying and be patient 

Poor seeing will be more obvious as you push the magnification. Eg for me on Thursday Jupiter looked small but tack sharp at x80 to x100. But at x170 and above it was a fuzzy mess.  

1 hour ago, dweller25 said:

The issue you are having could be poor seeing/jetsream related ?

I thought it might be. There has been some very poor seeing the last week for me in Southampton. Monday the exception but still it wasn’t great.

Astronomy requires patience. I can now recognise poor seeing, dew, transparency, collimation issues, stray light, when the OTA hasn’t  cooled enough… Eg for cooling I think it’s useful to look at targets as soon as you get setup and learn to recognise the issue. For me being able to recognise all of the above took about a year, maybe more. 

If dew is the problem you’ll notice it on your finder(s) first. So much so that I can’t see the finder cross-hairs let along the target. For this reason I have a finder dew shield too.

If you think that your secondary has dew shining a light at it, down the focuser, will confirm or deny.

As for collimation… have you done a star test? 

The rapid change in temperature of bringing the OTA back into the house where it’s warmer will quickly create condensation on your mirrors (primary and secondary) and in situations where you haven’t even got dew. You will then need to wait a considerable time, sometimes a couple of hours, for the condensation to evaporate.

Also keep in mind that heat from around your eyes/face can cause condensation to form on the glass of your eyepiece too.

What are the targets that you are trying to observe that aren’t clear? And when they aren’t clear what eyepiece(s) are you using? 

And watch out for spider poop! I had that on an old secondhand Dob. Surprisingly hard to remove from the primary too and obviously can’t do it any good. 

@JamesGlasgow, when I got my Skywatcher 200p it didn’t come with an extension for 1.25” eyepieces. But I found this (link below) worked perfectly and was ideal. It’ll fit into the short adapter you’ve bought already and give perfect focus using BST StarGuiders - which I have too.

https://www.meadeuk.com/Opticstar-1-25-inch-Extension-Tube.html

1 hour ago, bosun21 said:

I’m out again tonight to capture Jupiter again hopefully with better seeing conditions. After which I will switch to visual on some of my favourite targets. I’ll try and squeeze in a bit of Lunar also if I can bear the cold that long.

 

Good luck and Gods Speed! Seeing not the best here in Southampton and I’ve come in for a break. Although I could easily make out the GRS.

8 hours ago, GasGiant said:

Tempting. Expensive, though that version looks well made.

Apart from being tarted-up the one at FLO looks like that in practice it’ll will work the same as the design on this site. The drive motor is identical, the pillow bearings look practically the same. The only real difference I can see is that the segments are made out of wood faced with metal. Where as the design on here has the segments all aluminium.

Although personally I wouldn’t have the drive motor hanging off the end (more of a chance of it getting accidentally knocked) and I’m not a fan of the cut-outs. Although they will obviously make the unit lighter it will flex more and possibly introduce unwanted vibrations. 

Far too cloudy here tonight. Mind, the forecast for tomorrow looks promising if rather chilly, but I can live with that!

19 hours ago, bosun21 said:

No derotation as I could tell looking at them that it would be a waste of time and effort. This is just a single 90 second SER through the usual steps of Autostakkert III and Registax. I didn't even open Astrosurface for final tweaks. Oh well, onward and upward as they say. I'll be back at it the next clear night.

I think it’s still worth a go. Not that I have much imaging experience. Eg at about this time last year I got some really good visual views of Jupiter. And of course at that time it was much lower in the sky than it is now. In fact the only reason I gave it a go was because my daughter had some friends over and they wanted to see a planet. Jupiter was really the only option. It was probably one of the best views I had of Jupiter that apparition and better than a lot of this apparition. I nice surprise.

I’m also thinking of investing in a planetary camera. My daughter now has a laptop so I might be able to pinch that. I appreciate there’s a lot to learn, so giving it a go and practicing whenever possible sounds like a good idea. It’s what I’d do too. And even though it might not turn out quite as expected it’s a learning process so the time isn’t wasted. 

On 15/01/2024 at 13:55, Kon said:

I wanted to finish my planetary season with Mercury. As it is low on the horizon, I thought I will try during daylight. Unfortunately, at mag -0.5 it was not possible to locate it manually despite finding the much brighter Venus at -4.4. I captured Venus in IR as I was already setup. A tiny disc to end this planetary season or until Venus is much larger later in the spring. My usual 8" Dob setup.

 

Hi Kostas, 

Yesterday I had an attempt to find Mercury during daylight with my 200p. I have never actually seen it as my views low to the horizon are obscured. I didn’t want to image it, just see it! To try and locate Mercury I did my usual way of finding Venus during daylight, by syncing on the Sun (white light filter) as I’ve described before. In fact I went to Venus after the sun as the more points I can sync to with the app the better. I located Venus straight away in the middle of my finder which showed I was accurate. Synced on Venus then pushed to Mercury. From experience I know it would be close to the middle of the finder and within the FOV of a low power eyepiece. But as hard as I tried I just could not make out Mercury and after about half an hour I gave up.

Ahhh, well, there’s always another time.

Well, it depends on what you want and I can see that it could be fun on holiday.

But I’m more of a visual observer and I’ve taken a small telescope on holiday on carry-on to a bottle 2 location. The views through it were stunning! 🤩 

I’m not knocking the Seestar, it’s a wonderful bit of kit and as you say it’s not for planetary but then I can get something like this by just sticking my phone on a good old Skywatcher 200p Dob.  Editing in the stock iPhone camera app (it’s basically a live view) and converted to gif.

Personally I wouldn’t rush into anything “astronomy is a hobby that rewards patience”.

@Kon does some amazing planetary imagining with just a manual 8” Dob. I can’t see any difference between his results and others that have tracking. And, if I did imaging beyond using my smartphone I’d be more than happy with these results. You could try similar and decide at a later date if you really want to splash the cash on a more expensive setup. 

I  made an EQ platform for my Dob using the details below. I had some of the bits already and it cost me about £85. If you are OK with a bit of DIY something like this is so easy to make and tracks visually and for short exposures really well. Plus you can still push the Dob around, to new targets etc in the usual manner, with it still running.