Maideneer

2 hours ago, Capt Slog said:

@powerlord

Yes, I think that's awesome.

 

@Maideneer 

I'm a beginner (sort of)  and I've set myself the task of looking for the messier objects.  A lot of the time this comes down to the following..

1.  find the right bit of sky
2.  compare to Stellarium in ocular view.  Go back to step 1.   Repeat.
3.  so, if those are that pair of stars, then those might be that little triangle, so that means Mx should be twice that distance from that star just there
4. ah yes! there it is, that slight haze, right on the very edge of visual recognition.  If I bump the scope, it moves so it's not an artefact or my imagination.

If I see a clear image it's a rarity, and looking for the same object on another night might not be possible at all as the conditions have changed. (and vice versa). 

Stick with it.

I do kind of the same thing as you lol.  My biggest issue is the arcade style controls because the diagonal reverses everything so I always go the wrong way and then have to correct, it's so disorienting

5 hours ago, Knighty2112 said:

Use something around a 25 - 30mm EP in your scope, which will give you a much wider field of view to see with, so if your goto is not spot on it may at least show in the outer edges of the EP. M13 should easily seeable once found, along with M31. M27 should be too, but smaller in your EP, you should make it out still. I use a 30mm EP in my C8 SCT and can see all these quite easily, as long as the seeing permits. I live in bortle 7 area in a city and can see these objects relatively Ok. Much better in a dark sky site if your lucky enough though.

I have my 32mm EP, an 8-24 zoom (my favorite one) and a 23mm Luminos.  M13 last night was visible yes but was extremely difficult to view as were most things.  Did I finally see something? YES! But my eyes were straining more than I thought was normal.  M31 looked like a faint, small grey fuzz and I was presuming it would at least look like a faint, large grey fuzz lol...not sure why that is...even at 8mm. I'm in Bortle 6 so about the same as you.

6 hours ago, etsatlo said:

I've come to the same issue from the other side. Your setup sounds wonderfully advanced whereas mine was previously too basic.

What I found worked really well is (prepare for the inevitable) using a copy of Turn Left at Orion which gives really clear instructions on how to find things and sketches of what you'll likely see from suburban skies. In addition get a proper finder scope (e.g. a 6x30 right angle one, about £45 from FLO), a red dot sight won't cut it, at least not in my experience.

I was able to find and view M13 last night from my edge-of-large-town location in a 60 mm guide scope fitted with a star diagonal and a nearly full moon so you should be fine after some practice.

Stick with it, I promise it gets easier!

It's so funny, I have that book but have been too busy to get through it. I guess this is one situation where I'd love cloudy skies for a couple weeks so I can read it lol.  I have the 9x50 finder that came with the set and that's served me well so far I have to say.  I did find M13 last night (sort of), for some reason it was totally clear out for hours but all the star clusters and nebula I tried viewing were either faint beyond belief or just not visible.  M13 was probably my best seeing but it still wasn't that great, it was very difficult to make it out.

59 minutes ago, CraigT82 said:

Did you slacken off the tripod bolt before trying to turn the azimuth adjusters? Just needs to be backed off a tad before adjusting then nipped up gently once happy. 

Also remember that when you tighten one Az adjuster you need to slacken the other

I did and it made a *slight* difference but not much.  Everything just feels like it needs oil or something but who knows...I just have to keep playing with it.  Not sure why this aspect has to be so tricky.

5 minutes ago, Stu said:

Absolutely, keep it simple! Which mount are you using? If an EQ then a basic polar alignment will help with the star alignment. 

CGEM II mount - trying again tonight, fingers crossed! But those Azimuth adjustment knobs are so tight! They’re very hard to move, almost like they need oil or something. It’s laborious work and I feel like it shouldn’t be.

2 minutes ago, globular said:

For your CGEM II the alignment steps are:

1. Rough Align
2. EQ Align
3. Polar Alignment
4. EQ Align #2 (optional)
5. Calibrate Mount (optional)

For visual use you need to do 1, 2 and 3. 
4 & 5 are unlikely to be necessary - unless you are imaging or unless 1 and/or 2 was very rough.

1. is point it north
2. is set the correct degrees for your location
3. is star alignment
4. will make automatic slewing to targets more accurate.
5. allows the mount to compensate for heavy / unbalanced loads that require slightly different movements depending on which way the telescope is pointing.

Clear skies tonight over here.  I've got my Starsense autoalign and my hand controller. Starsense apparently can do ASPA so I'm going to give it a shot.

15 minutes ago, Knighty2112 said:

Make sure your not set on lunar or solar tracking as that is a different tracking rate than for tracking stars etc.

Thanks so much!  Do I need to polar align to accomplish this or an EQ align is enough?

*where is that shame shame shame gif when you need it?*

When I slew to an object using my C9.25/CGEM II, in addition to finding the object the mount will automatically track the object and keep it centered in the eyepiece assuming alignment is correct yes?  The reason I'm asking this is because my mount was definitely NOT doing this yesterday, objects immediately started drifting out of FOV and I could not figure out why for the life of me. I almost felt like I was back using my little Alt/Az manual mount.

There's nothing extra I have to do after slewing to keep the object centered for a while is there?

7 minutes ago, Stu said:

First question is always what are your skies like, as that will set the expectation of what you will see. That said I could see M57 easily with a 60mm scope from Bortle 7 skies so I expect the problem is more about targeting than anything else.

You could try aligning on Vega, then slewing to M57 which is nearby. It is small at low power so may be possible to miss, but get it centred and up the power and there is no mistaking it. You could try the same with Albireo and M27 which is larger and harder to miss.

I don’t agree these are unimpressive, with a decent sky and dark adapted eyes they are pretty amazing to see.

Keep trying, you will get there.

Skies were great last night so it's more than likely user error lol.  In essence what I do is face the thing north, do a Starsense autoalign (I recalibrated last night because I screwed it up the day prior) and then autoalign again.  I don't really polar align yet because I'm not planning on imaging for a while - gotta find it before you can capture it haha.  Ok great, so I'm going to try that tonight. M57 and M27.

Like most things, I think I have to slow it all down, stop trying to do too much and just take it one object at a time.  Too many EP's, too many devices, too many softwares etc. - it makes it all overwhelming and honestly not that enjoyable.  Sometimes less is more and I have to remember that.

1 hour ago, Cosmic Geoff said:

This may be a problem of expectations. Fuzzy DSO's will be unimpressive with a 9.25" SCT even from a site with dark skies.  Typically all you will see is a faint fuzzy nucleus. M27 will fill around half the FOV at low magnification and will be dim.

Getting them on screen via a ASI224MC camera may be more difficult than you realise. The point of focus will be quite a distance from eyepiece focus (not parfocal, in other words) and the field of view will be very small, about the the same as a 5mm FL eyepiece. Without using a 'flip mirror diagonal' it will be very difficult to secure any sort of image. And the FOV will be too small for anything other than planetary nebulae and small distant galaxies. (The size of M31 is around 3 degrees in a photo, about six times the FOV of your scope)

It is always wise to check that the GoTo is aligned, by slewing to some unmistakeable object preferably not too far from the object you are trying to see. And stick to usung the Starsense handset for now. That's what I do. 🙂

It was just a fool's hope to get something on screen with my 224, I knew it wasn't gonna work but took a leap of faith.  I must have played around and worked on my GoTo alignment 6 times last night and I feel like it was still acting up.  Even Jupiter and Saturn which normally stay centered were drifting off.  So yes, sticking to the HC for now until I'm proficient enough to move on.

2 hours ago, Kon said:

Seeing the fuzzy DSOs will require fairly dark skies (away from city lights). The moon is quite bright at the moment so many of them will be hard to see. Do not expect to see colour in most of the DSOs; some planetary may have some colour; most will look greyish in the EP. You will also need to have dark adaption for at least 30-40min to see them. I usually start at ~50x magnification and play around with other EPs to increase mag. 

I have an 8" Dob and the drawings in this website is pretty much what I see at the EP:

http://www.deepskywatch.com/messier-dso-sketches.html

 

Ohhhhhhhhhh so you're saying that basically any consumer style scope will show you these objects in grey and then only when imaging -> processing is color essentially added, yes?  Finding these things your first time is confusing as hell when you don't know what to look for, even if you know exactly what they look like...what a strange phenomenon.

Much appreciated!

I've gotten really good at viewing and focusing in on Jupiter, Saturn and the moon, that's all extremely easy for me now.  But I have this strange hesitation with trying to slew to and observe anything else, I quite literally don't know how - I tried for the first time yesterday and it was a total bomb.  All the checking in the world on Astronomy Tools didn't make a lick of difference for me - I tried M31, M13, M27.  I slewed to it last night and didn't see a thing, and hell I wasn't even sure at that point that my GoTo was working right because there was nothing there.  I used all the right EP's, I even tried using my 224MC and nothing.  Is it a focus problem?  aka, if I am perfectly focused for the stars, can I slew to one of these objects and be able to see it right away without touching the focuser?  And what on earth will I be seeing?  Is it the colorful blasts I'm used to seeing in photos or am I looking for something different entirely?  I read the "What will I see?" thread stickied here and I still can't grasp it.

I think tonight I'm going to try a different method...last night I was playing around and trying to learn all sorts of new stuff - ASPA, CPWI etc. - things I had never done or used before so maybe I was just overloaded and could not think straight.  By the way, using CPWI isn't the easiest thing in the world as it disables my hand controller and I actually like the hand controller.  I think maybe later on I'm going to stick to my HC and StarSense only and see if that works for me.

Boy do I sound lost huh?🙂

I'm reading these are supposed to move the mount left or right and they both push off the alignment peg on the tripod head.  My question is, are these knobs supposed to be insanely laborious to adjust?  I feel like all I do is turn turn turn these things a hundred times each way and nothing really ever moves and it's difficult to turn them in the process as well.  Once the mount is on the tripod it's not like I can actually see in there to view what's going on but man, it's a whole lotta work for a whole lotta nothing.

Thank you. I actually do have an ADC but because it was cloudy'ish last night and in my haste I forgot to attach it, lesson learned.  The focus was challenging - even with a dew shield my corrector plate was dripping wet and since clouds were rolling in as I said it was a mad dash to the finish line.  I see that it's blurry and it's annoying me 🙂

In Registax, I did use RGB balance and this is what it gave me.  Also at the top and bottom if you look really carefully, you'll see what almost look like lines of latitude...that's the wavelet processing which I tried to keep to absolute minimums.

It sounds like I'm almost there but need to either wait for a better night and/or remember to actually use the specific crap that I bought lol.

Just realized this contest existed.  I don't expect a winner of course because this is my very first try but why not I guess.  C9.25HD, ASI224MC, 15% of 6,000 frames, PiPP/AS/Registax - done in horrible humidity and not the best seeing conditions on 16 August.

I only get better when people rip my work apart, this way I know what to correct. While not my very first planetary shot technically, it is my very first one with the C9.25 HD as opposed to my little Travelscope 70, so the learning gap is wide.

Something like 15% of 6,000 frames used here - PiPP, AS and Registax using a ASI224MC.

7 hours ago, Cosmic Geoff said:

There is an error in the printed instructions IMHO. My printed manual includes a handwritten note to press ALIGN after step 2. above, then do the coarse centering.

I don't know if this will necessarily fix the ERROR NO SOLUTION but I follow my procedure and I don't get that message and the calibration is effective.

On my C8 I suspect the camera is catching some of the OTA and dew shield in its FOV but it does not appear to matter.  Your camera axis should be parallel to the OTA axis. If it isn't, by a large margin, that could cause a problem if the above procedure does not tune it out.

You rock man, that worked! Thanks a million!

8 hours ago, Cosmic Geoff said:

There is an error in the printed instructions IMHO. My printed manual includes a handwritten note to press ALIGN after step 2. above, then do the coarse centering.

I don't know if this will necessarily fix the ERROR NO SOLUTION but I follow my procedure and I don't get that message and the calibration is effective.

On my C8 I suspect the camera is catching some of the OTA and dew shield in its FOV but it does not appear to matter.  Your camera axis should be parallel to the OTA axis. If it isn't, by a large margin, that could cause a problem if the above procedure does not tune it out.

Thanks, I'll try this out next opportunity.  For some reason it always feels like these scope manufacturers operate very much like a "mom and pop" shop with their printed collateral and customer service, but sell millions of dollars of product, enough to warrant a higher standard of service than a vague and non-informative manual like it's printed off the same line as a fortune cookie factory.  No wonder it's a difficult hobby to enter, it's very much a DIY/learn yourself via Youtube kind of thing...the official sources almost make it a barrier.

Last night it showed all red for me but turned to be perfectly clear.  Don't trust any forecast 100% and don't give up hope!

I'm just getting used to my new StarSense camera and something is really confusing me.  The manual says a calibration needs to be done the very first time (and only time I suppose) you start using this camera.  I did the first alignment procedure just fine after a bit of trial and error and then was moving on to the calibration step as follows:

1. Go to "Named Stars"
2. Select a star for alignment and press {ENTER} to begin slewing.
3. Do coarse centering, press {ENTER} when complete.
4. Do fine centering finishing by using UP and RIGHT arrow keys, press {ALIGN} when completed.
5. Press {ENTER} when "Solution Found" message displays.
6. Shut down the mount.
7. Restart the mount and do a StarSense AutoAlign.

My problem occurred during point #5.  It didn't say Solution Found it said ERROR NO SOLUTION. For the life of me I can't figure out why.

Also as a side note, I feel like the mount plate for the camera causes the unit to sort of turn in a bit of a downward position, almost so that I have to believe a tiny bit of the sensor perhaps picks up some of the OTA itself...it's definitely not straight on.  My dew shield doesn't help that matter either, so not sure if these things are related.  I have the unit mounted on the right side of the OTA, so maybe I should move it to the center position.

The bar arrived today!  If I told you Celestron packed it well, that would be an understatement.  The entire box was taped over followed by about a pound of packing material inside, and then the bar itself was first wrapped in about 2 feet of bubble wrap followed by a couple circles worth of packing tape followed by another 2 feet of bubble wrap lol. I've never seen a box prepared that way haha.

Aye I'm so relieved!  Which means of course the next couple of days will be filled with clouds of course, but that's ok...I can now take my time and learn the thing. What a ride!

Welp, I've been advised Friday is the day again.  UPS is shipping and this time will require my signature upon receipt.  Hoping this finally clears it all up.

Thanks for allowing me to release a little bit of frustration here.  I've checked stock on the major sites every day for seven straight months as I was in the market for a C9.25HD + CGEM II Mount - as we know the global supply chain is all disrupted so this made for a tedious exercise.

Finally about 3 weeks ago I saw some in stock and snapped one up.  Sure enough everything shipped ok and arrived at my house 12 days ago.  Starting to assemble everything I got to the point to attach the counterweight bar to the mount and realized there was no counterweight bar to be found!  Whoever did the packing somewhere along the line did not include the bar in the box.  I had to contact the retailer and tell them about it and they began the process of contacting Celestron for a replacement.  A day or two later I was relieved to learn a brand new bar was on its way but would take about a week to arrive due to shipping. Ok, so patiently I waited (again) and last Thursday was the day the bar was due to arrive.  I come home from work and sure enough the box is there at the steps, although it felt suspiciously light!  Bring it inside, open it up...and it's an EMPTY box.  I thought someone was playing a prank on me like on a hidden camera show.  Then I discover the box had about a 2" gaping hole in one corner and somehow the thing must have slipped out (or someone stole it).  So back I went to Celestron customer service again who is now trying to get me set up with yet another bar and told me that it would take another 7-10 days to receive it, hopefully anyway.

Here I sit with a beautiful, brand new $4,000 telescope for 2 weeks now and I cannot use it because of some crazy turn of events that sounds highly ridiculous and totally improbable and yet here we are.  I wish I could say I was frustrated which is probably an understatement right now.  Sure, this all seems like a first world problem and I know there are starving children somewhere so boo-hoo about your telescope, I get that.  I just can't believe my luck, it's like someone or something doesn't want me having this scope!

8 hours ago, Maideneer said:

Still waiting for my counterweight bar, but the post office tells me that today is the day!  I hope to god the right one is delivered and I can get going with my new toys, it's been the longest week I swear!

I am ABSOLUTELY beside myself. The box with the counterweight bar arrived today, I raced home to get it. I open the box and it was totally EMPTY. I thought I was on a prank show.

I just can’t believe it, now I have to start the process all over again of waiting, this is crazy! And I’m just really sad.

On 29/07/2021 at 10:02, Maideneer said:

I'm contacting Agena Astro today to try and resolve it.  My heart sank as I was building my new rig and came to the point where I realized there was no bar.  I checked each shipping box 6 times, looked in my couch cushions, you name it...it's just not there.  I worry that they just don't have something like that laying around, but maybe I'm wrong.  Hoping for good news, but I'll probably have to wait another week now to start using the thing.

Still waiting for my counterweight bar, but the post office tells me that today is the day!  I hope to god the right one is delivered and I can get going with my new toys, it's been the longest week I swear!