Chandra

Interesting setup to start with!! Be very welcome to the community... Who hasn't ever had focusing problems in their first AP steps?? It comes standard on learning curves... Don't be discouraged and keep going!!

There are no planets visible until late at night, although I am sure that a view of Saturn will be worth getting up early, after 4 am. until dawn you will be able to see it well if the weather conditions allow it, your refractor telescope will provide you with a great view. You will also have a waning Moon before dawn, you will see that observing the Moon is one of the most surprising, pleasant and inexhaustible for the amateur astronomer. Unfortunately, the light pollution conditions you indicate will make it difficult for you to make deep sky observations. Still, as you say, be sure to look up! Welcome and clearly skies!

Right now your Radian 8mm provides you with what is known as resolving magnification, that is, the one that provides an exit pupil of 1mm (the magnification equivalent to the effective aperture). A 6.5mm eyepiece will be around the maximum effective magnification of your optics, that is, the one that optimizes the light collection capacity and the resolution capacity of your aperture. Of course you could continue increasing the power with 5mm and even 4mm eyepieces, but going beyond 200x-250x will always be difficult with any aperture due to atmospheric conditions (seeing). Getting quality views from those magnifications requires good seeing conditions, and there aren't many nights a year that provide them. Perhaps only the Moon, as a very bright object with high contrast details, could support them. However, this also always depends a little on each person's level of demand. On the other hand, as DirkSteele has very well explained to you, the more you reduce the exit pupil, the more likely you are to be bothered by the "eye floaters" (we would talk about exit pupils below approximately 0.6mm), and also the more you get older... On the other hand, light is dispersed more when passing through higher power lenses, which can result in a blurry or distorted image that is more difficult to focus correctly. In addition, increasing the power of the eyepiece also affects the amount of light that reaches the observer's eye (the image becomes less bright). And as our colleague told you, the field of vision is also reduced. You can compensate for this by using larger apparent field eyepieces, but good large apparent field and short focal length eyepieces are expensive, so you'll probably end up with average quality eyepieces that may give you that larger field of view, but the viewing quality of the object will worsen rapidly from the center of the field towards the edges... From my point of view, although with apparent fields around 50º-60º, there are good eyepieces (planetary) with a contained cost, such as the Ortho from Baader, the UWA TMB Planetary II or the BST Starguider. You can also choose to get a good Barlow (for example the Televue 2x), and with your Radian 8mm you would be at the maximum magnification of your telescope, on nights with good seeing you could take advantage of that configuration.

He will probably have to do it through ASCOM if when he opens the devices option in Stellarium a driver compatible with his mount does not appear... In this case he should download the appropriate programs and drivers from Support on the official Sky Watcher website. The process may be a little longer...

Good contribution. The Baader Contrast Booster seems to be the winner in this comparison... It would undoubtedly be the most economical option for our OP, and, furthermore, there would be no customs problems with it... In any case he also wanted to improve its support and, preferably, expand the aperture to 5", so the use of a CA control filter in his current scope would probably not meet his expectations...

Hello again... I don't know to what extent connecting the mount with a Mac is different from doing it with a PC, but I imagine it shouldn't be very different... Anyway, I think not all versions of Stellarium allow you to control the telescope. I use a slightly old one, 0.19.3, but of course, it is for PC. You must make sure that the version you use includes the option. As for your doubts, the connection to the computer must be made through the USB port, which is the one on the right of the photograph, as the manual indicates. This option is relatively new (V5) on SynScan controllers. In theory, once the connection has been established, the system assigns a serial port directly. From the photo you attached I understand that it is the first in the list that opens, it would be where you should click. For everything to work, remember to have your telescope previously aligned. I hope I have been able to help you. Maybe there is a companion who has established the connection using Mac and has more information.

You are very welcome! I hope this video can help you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0RzOsVXhAQ&ab_channel=MartinPyott Clear skies!

I think the best fit for your budget is a Mak 127. A short refractor would also be possible, but if you want to gain more aperture, you may not find one short enough to fit in your backpack... and in any case, a short achromatic doublet will always present the aberration problems that have already been mentioned, although it is also true that, especially the CA, it may not bother you unless you work at high magnifications. https://www.astroshop.eu/telescopes/skywatcher-telescope-ac-120-600-startravel-bd-az-3/p,16710 https://www.astroshop.eu/telescopes/bresser-maksutov-telescope-mc-127-1900-messier-ota/p,44005 https://www.teleskop-spezialisten.de/shop/Telescope/Maksutov-Cassegrain/100-145mm/SKYWATCHER-TELESCOPIC-SKYMAX-127-AZ5-Maksutov-on-AZ-mount::3504.html?language=en As for the mount, if you simply purchase a dovetail clamp and some pieces of PTFE (Teflon) material, you can with a little ingenuity make a stable and sturdy AZ mount for your telescope.

Of course, well back, and good luck with the promotion of astronomy, I am convinced that looking up the sky helps us become better people...

It wouldn't be unreasonable to do "serious" astrophotography with a Newton, but then he would have to mount it in an equatorial configuration, get a coma corrector and above all invest a lot of money in a sturdy support, which would undoubtedly enormously exceed the initial budget... In the end, it is clear that a small APO refractor ends up being cheaper...

I have read in different publications that OSG uses state-of-the-art manufacturing and test lines on their mirrors which ensures diffraction limited performance, with a surface quality of at least 1/16 wave RMS, and often better, i.e. optical performance with virtually no light dispersion. Supposedly, the image produced by their mirrors is above the standard, however they are manufactured in a material (borosilicate N-BK7) with a coefficient of thermal expansion greater than that of the optical glass used in the manufacture of Bresser mirrors in this category, whose material is H-PZ33, with similar specs to Pyrex. Considering that the cooling rate of a mirror is proportional to the square of the thickness of a mirror, and the thickness depends on the aperture (for the surfaces of the primary mirrors to be undeformed and stable, the thickness-diameter ratio must be at least 1/6), with a diameter of 10" the mirror must be at least 40mm thick. That is a very considerable mass of glass to cool, which will require a long time to reach (almost) thermal equilibrium. Perhaps this is the reason why the OSG incorporates the cooling fan, to accelerate the thermal balancing process of its mirror, since due to the material in which it is constructed, it therefore has a higher linear expansion coefficient. In the acclimatization process, which in these mirrors of considerable size will hardly take less than 2 hours (depending on the thermal gradient to be overcome), the figure of the Bresser could possibly be somewhat better than that of the OSG. Of course, once both are there. acclimatized, the figure of the OSG will supposedly surpass that of the Bresser, if we trust the quality data of its surface. Anyway, it is likely that I have not clarified anything, but I wanted to make the point, since we have been talking perhaps more about the accessories, the focuser and the quality of the mount (aspects that are obviously very important), than about the optical quality (which it also is). I must admit, however, that in this case the best thing would be to test both tubes in parallel and under the same conditions in a real observation, and it is likely that no one here can say that they have done it...

With the budget of 500/600 euros I think that 6" Mak or SC are ruled out, unless you get a used one or a great offer from a seller. If you are looking for aperture, with that budget you can get a compact 150mm Classic Cassegrain (CC), a mount prepared for an 8" Nexstar SE should hold it well... Now, I have no experience with that optical design, but I have found conflicting opinions about it. For a while I was tempted by one, but a review by Ed Thing, in which I did not appreciate excessive enthusiasm, finally made me opt for the "safe" option of a 6" Newton. https://youtu.be/Stlw04tsrc8?si=z5VaIg3cGUdxAmH5 So, what is left among the unused compact tubes within your budget? As some members have commented, the Mak 127mm, an OTA that is perfectly tested and that will undoubtedly offer you extraordinary views of the Moon.

As dwellwe25 has commented, it would be interesting to know the budget... I think we should assume that any optical design is going to offer you excellent views of the Moon, it is by far the most grateful celestial object, due to its proximity and endless amount of details. That said, I agree with our fellows who point out the Mak as a priority option. A 127mm is light enough to be mounted on an AZ-GTi or an AZ GoTo (or its successor, a Star Discovery), all of which are motorized mounts that are very portable and easy to set up. More aperture would require heavier (and more expensive) supports. I do not rule out refractors, with so many lovers of the most classic optical design, I am surprised that no one has mentioned them. Achromatic doublets between 80 and 102mm are light enough to be mounted without problems on any of the aforementioned mounts. We would be talking about focal lengths of between 800mm and 1000mm to reach reasonable cromatic aberration ratios, so they are not tubes as "compact" as the Mak, but acclimatization is faster and will avoid condensation problems on the meniscus lens. We can reduce torque and increase stability if we shorten the FL, but then if we don't want more CA we have to go to ED doublets, which, honestly, offer incredible high-contrast views on the Moon (on my opinion, the best views). The aforementioned mounts can support these tubes without any problem up to F/7... but, yes, the budget already skyrockets... The same happens if we look for more aperture with a Schmidt-Cassegrain, it is a very versatile but expensive design. The Newton 114mm or 130mm (with parabolic primary) would not be a bad option either and would be light enough to be supported by the motorized mounts that I have mentioned. But they also require a little more acclimatization than refractors and, of course, decent collimation to obtain the best figure. I have always talked about a motorized mount to facilitate objects tracking, thinking especially on planetary observation, but all the OTAs could also work perfectly with manual azimuth mounts such like AZ5 or Twilight I.

I very much agree with our fellow's opinion. The Star Sense range from Celestron is an excellent option to get started, although in my case I would reject the 127mm reflector model. It is an innovative "push to" system that is not based on the gyroscope and accelerometer of your smartphone, nor on encoders installed on the mount, but rather uses the cell phone camera to take images and resolve them in specific software previously installed. The support has a simple mirror whose reflection coincides with the mobile camera. With a few small controls, the correct centering is achieved so that what is displayed in the center of the smartphone camera screen coincides with the optical axis of the telescope. From then on, it becomes a plate solver and is able to orient itself quite precisely in the night sky to guide you in the search for any celestial object, particularly faint objects that you would otherwise spend a lot of time trying to locate with the classic "star jumping" method. Although it usually requires good observing conditions, with clouds or the glare of the full Moon it may fail by not obtaining the necessary references. Almost two years ago I purchase a 70mm refractor as a gift for a beginner. Before delivering it, I wanted to test both the optical tube and the Star Sense system, and both passed the test with flying colors. I was even surprised by the good optical quality of the lens, which I think makes this tube a great bang for the buck. The stars were very sharpened (it arrived in a perfect collimation status) and, although chromatic aberration was present, it didn't bother me at all (CA ratio = 3.63). The focuser, despite its simplicity (the typical linear r&p), it worked fine. The two eyepieces that came in the pack are basic but correct (I think they are a modified achromatic design, MA), the 2x Barlow is better to change as soon as possible. I added a 6mm Plössl eyepiece to the pack to better complete the magnification range. The mount and tripod were basic, made of very light aluminum, so I devised a device to suspend a weight of at least 2-3 kg from the center of the eyepiece tray, which gave greater stability to the setup. Precisely its lightness makes it a good grab and go. As Second Time Around explains, the 80mm is tempting, 1cm more aperture for little more money, but you have to consider that there are 20cm more focal length and more weight in the same mount, therefore more lever arm and greater instability... Perhaps the most reasonable option would be to jump to the 102mm, which is already mounted on a seemingly more solid support, but the cost already exceeds, I'm afraid, your budget. Since the ability of the telescope to take images is important to you, I attach some photos and videos of the Moon and Sun that I took in my tests. They were taken with a Galaxy S20FE and a Celestron NexYZ smartphone adapter. Solar photos, of course, with the corresponding Baader Solar Safety film. In this case, I didn't do the test with planets, but I still think it would be perfectly possible to take short videos as they travel through the field of view, and even also images of some bright DSOs using low-light photography applications. 20221106_234640.mp4 20221106_235453.mp4

Welcome!! As you understand, I can't help you decide which local group to be part of, but it is an excellent decision to join one to share, experience and learn....

I suppose it may depend on the build quality of the cell holding the primary mirror and also how tight the locking knobs are, but I think it's better not to tight them too much in order to avoid putting stress on the mirror (which may lead to introducing additional aberrations), especially when it is subjected to large thermal gradients.

It is always difficult to decide to buy a first instrument for observing the sky, especially when we start from zero experience with them. For this reason, it is usually recommended to start by attending star parties, where you begin to gain field experience alongside more experienced observers, and you have the opportunity to learn about and visualize through different optical designs. On the other hand there are the children. I believe that most of us here show interest in astronomy at a very early age, which proves that this can be a hobby that lasts... In any case, curiosity in children is something common and extensive, and it does not mean that as they grow they will keep alive or cultivate all the concerns previously shown, but astronomical observation is so stimulating, deep and I would say even formative of the spirit, that it is always worth trying to feed and encourage in children their natural curiosity. From here, I allow myself to list some aspects that I think you should consider, apart from all those mentioned by our fellows. - There is no such thing as a "perfect observation instrument." With the use of any of them you will find that there are advantages and disadvantages, but you must consider that the one you decide on, as long as it meets minimum quality standards, has the potential to provide you and your child with knowledge and satisfaction. In this sense, remind you of the motto of every stargazer that the best observing instrument is not the most expensive, nor the largest, nor the most sophisticated, but rather the one that is used the most. - You should always mainly consider the conditions of what will be your usual place of observation: its width, thermal gradient at nights, humidity, time for dedication, quality of the sky, accessibility to the place, etc. All these factors are parameters that play a little more in favor or against the size of the configurations and optical designs. Generally, telescopes on AZ mounts with an aperture of up to 150mm are the best adaptable to any variable of the aforementioned parameters. Binoculars are also an option but always on a mounting; It must be taken into consideration that observation with them from about 45º above the horizon, if they are not angled (and that makes them very expensive), is somewhat uncomfortable due to the position of the neck. - AZ GoTo mounts are ideal for urban observers who do not have much time, or who cannot dedicate it due to weather conditions. You have been told that when there are children, time to locate objects is crucial, and it is true, children are not usually characterized by their patience. In this sense, refractors (3" to 4", for example) with medium focal ratios (F/6 to F/8) are ideal for handling in these conditions, due to their short acclimatization time and good performance on low-end mounts. The mount that has already been mentioned AZGTi is very interesting at a very reasonable price, but you should keep in mind that when you use it manually it does not have slow motion controls, which can make it difficult to use in that mode. Automatic tracking of objects is also highly advisable when observing with more people. The option of Star Sense (Push To) technology may also be interesting, although in this case the tracking must be done manually. - The planets usually look small with respect to the field of view, since only on nights with good seeing (which are normally less than we would like), and as long as the optics allow it, is it possible to exceed 150x with an acceptable viewing quality. Think that you can already obtain this increase in decent conditions with an aperture of 80-90mm. The nebulae also do not present the colors of the photographs, the sky in visual astronomy is basically black and white and only with huge apertures (from 18") under pristine skies is it possible to begin to intuit colors in the gas and dust clouds. We must be very aware of what and how things look through amateur instruments, however, the aperture is what primarily determines the level of detail visible in objects. - Finally. There has been talk of EAA. It is a fairly new discipline that has been implemented in parallel with the development of CMOS and CCD sensors, I would say that it is complementary to visual observation, but does not replace it. Over time I think it is an interesting option for any observer, especially urban or semi-urban, but I would not recommend someone who is starting out to do it through the EAA, since this involves software programs (Sharpcap or Firecapture), computer, camera, use of Barlow, maybe flip mirror, if you want to achieve more precise focus, power supply, cables... The setup gets a little complicated.

Welcome! I'm sure you'll find many answers to your questions in the Beginners threads, and if not, you can always start a new discussion...

Welcome to SGL! Help is guaranteed, as for the black hole in your wallet, it may not be entirely inevitable, take it step by step and enjoying every moment...😉

The main advice for anyone who receives a reflector, whether new or used, and before starting to loosen any screws or move any mirror, is to check the alignment status of the optics. I also believe that this verification is best done with Cheshire and a collimation cap, since the laser, even when collimated, will not give all the information about the optimal performance of the tube. Once the check is done, it will then be decided what needs to be touched. If the figure of the secondary mirror is circular and concentric with respect to the focusing tube, and the contour of the reflection of the primary mirror in it is also concentric, it will not be necessary to touch the secondary mirror and we will save ourselves a lot of work. All these phases of the alignment are the most complicated but, fortunately, also the most durable... On the other hand, the final phase, the alignment of the primary mirror, is the simplest, but also the one that can most easily be lost when transporting or moving the tube. This is where I think using a well collimated laser can be most useful, although the Cheshire or even the collimation cap also serves the purpose. I agree with the view that delivery to the customer of a new tube with the correct secondary settings should be guaranteed.

Santa here is called "Papa Noel", and he left little interesting things... A lunar calendar for 2024 that includes different ephemeris such as conjunctions, eclipses, etc. A 2" SVBony 34mm and 72º AFOV eyepiece (which is actually 32mm and 70º, a clone of the Orion Q70), this was a self-gift. And a very interesting field guide to deep sky objects, which from my city Bortle 7 it will help me... not much... but very grateful...

Well... It seems we are sharing same skies... Actually, this crystal ball was given to me on my birthday...

To my knowledge, motorized AZ mounts automatically perform tracking the target once it has been reached and centered in the field of view (always use an eyepiece that gives you a wide field of view, like your 25mm). With the command you can move the mount at will at different speeds with the directional arrows, but it should do the tracking, normally there is a sidereal, lunar and solar tracking mode (this one must be activated sometimes, for safety). If it is not tracking after pointing an object, maybe you have it disabled ("no tracking" option), or maybe you need to activate the "point and track" option... These are just suggestions because each SynScan console model is a little particular... Clear skys and happy 2024!

Welcome you! In the Getting Started General Help and Advice threads you will surely be able to find good advice on deciding on a entry level kit and keep sharing sky observation with your child, and if you need help, be sure to ask your questions, you already know that there are many friendly fellow here who will gladly assist you.

In my case I think that the Astro Baby guide is very correct, in fact it is the one I used in the first collimation of my Newton F/5.9. In stage 2 (alignment of the secondary mirror with the focuser tube) the important thing is that the figure of the secondary mirror with respect to the circle of the focusing tube, and that of the reflection of the primary mirror in the secondary mirror with respect to its edge, are concentric circles, as indicated by @Spile in the guide he shares. In this phase 2 is when you work with the displacement and inclination in its different axes of the secondary (the primary is not touched in this phase, and more than its center what matters is its edge and the clips that hold it). Once a reasonably correct figure is achieved and the screws are adjusted, under normal conditions we can forget about this collimation phase for a long time. Phase 3 is when the primary mirror must be aligned to the secondary mirror using Chesire, although the use of the perforated cover is also sufficient. In fact, in most Chesire it is possible to unscrew the eyepiece to screw it into a 1.25" pitch barrel, obtaining a perfect collimation cap. On the other hand, a new telescope should not arrive in a poor state of collimation, so it would almost be better not to touch the secondary (phase 2) at the outset, and to verify if, in fact, the figures are circular and concentric. We would then go directly to phase 3. If we do have to proceed to check the alignment from the beginning, we must be patient, the first collimation is always complicated and we have to dedicate a lot of time to it, it is very important to go step by step and verify what is being done and if it is being done well. But for visual observation, "perfect" collimation is not necessary, so it is not advisable to fall into the obsession of achieving it either. You have to consider that there are many parameters that can make collimation NOT "perfect", and in entry level or budget telescopes the margin of error for these parameters is greater, and sometimes we simply cannot control them. A star test that offers a reasonable result is a good indication that your optical tube is working fine. All pictures have been taken during collimation processes with my Newton.