Emdeejay

It's an 8" celestron nexstar, it had the starbright xlt high performance coatings. I saw some disturbing on it and I blew on it and noticed a tiny little flick of spit and I went to wipe it with a micro fiber cloth and it left little streaks and I don't know what to do to get them off I'm terrified to use anything else now. What should I do, do you think it scratched it, omg I'm almost in tears over here. Any advice is greatly appreciated thanks so much!

It says my area is 5 on the bortle rating. But going by the colors on the rating it looks somewhere between 5 and 6 so it's definitely quite light polluted here, I've never seen the milky way or central galaxy as it calls it, I didn't know you were supposed to be able to see it with the naked eye haha. So yea apparently my area is much more polluted than I originally thought. I'll have to go outside next time the power goes. Not that I want that to happen either, it's too damn hot for that. It's a shame that's the only time I'd be able to see most of that stuff.... so apparently I'll have to go camping somewhere if I wanna get a glimpse of anything real well.

I always make sure all lights are off in my yard and house and it's usually pretty dark in NY immediate area but go a few miles and I've got some pretty brightly lit areas. Also would a focal reducer help or would I be better off using a 40mm wide angle eyepiece. I tried a focal reducer but I wasn't caring much for the view through it, it was severely vignetted whereas imo the 40mm gave as much of a wide view as the f.r. did, but with the 40mm ep I got a big crystal clear view as opposed to the small vignetted view of the f.r. maybe I need to add the space between it and the e.p. it's just one of those ones that screws on the e.p. I couldn't spring for the expensive f6.3 celestron f.r. not yet anyways.... I could see andromed better with sct imo it didn't look much different from the 4", and the 4" is an f6.5 so I had really good views with it. I got the 8"sct cause I wanted some bigger aperture with better zoom capabilities and then I thought with a focal reducer it would be good for dso's as well so it seemed like the best choice but the focal reducer so far isn't working how I was hoping, I have no spacing between it and the eyepiece though.... I would have preferred a slightly bigger Dob with goto but the whole world seems to be experiencing a quite literal telescope famine right now, so I didn't have as many choices as I would have liked. I originally had wanted an AVX 8" newt with f/5 but after ordering it and waiting 3 weeks I was told it wouldn't be in stock again till June 2022 so I canceled that order and this was one of the only telescopes I could find that I really liked. Stupid covid freaking ruining the world man. But I digress... I love the sct and with the 40mm e.p. I think it's pretty much as wide an angle as the 4" f6.5 scope. I'm gonna check that light pollution chart. Thanks for that.

I just got an 8" nexstar evolution and it's great I love it. But I feel like I should be able to see more than I am seeing, I can't see any nebulae to speak of, granted I know I would see orion since I could see it in my 4" refractor quite well, but its not out at night right now. But I can't see any nebulae at all. I'm wondering is this cause the moon is so bright r.n.? Is my scope just still not big enough? Or is it possible this area is more light polluted than I previously thought. It gets pretty dark out here but I am near a larger well lit city, however my entire neighborhood has 0 street lights, just porch lights and backyard lights that people put in themselves, so it is quite dark here. However I feel I should be able to see more nebulae, I'm not expecting colors and all that I know that's not realistic at this level of aperture(or any really unless it's like a 14"or 16" literal light bucket and even then...)however I still think I should be able to see some. Andromeda is a light fuzzy patch in the sky, I can see some star clusters and planets and stars obviously and the omega nebula shows up just barely as a hardly noticeable gray patch that no1 would notice unless they knew what to look for. Is my scope just too small still, is the moon too bright right now? Or am I suffering from a case much worse light pollution than I even knew I had. Please lemme know, cause I'm feeling a big discouraged, like what must one spend to be able to see up there. I'm not going into this with unrealistic expectations either, I know I'm not gonna see stuff like you see in pics or even close to it for that matter. But I feel like this scope should be providing some better views than this. Lemme know your thoughts please. I just wanna know what I should be able to be seeing so I know if its the scope or what. Thanks. All input is appreciated.

Ahh okay, that explains why moving the knobs fixed the double image. The bino's came with no instructions at all so I'm just flying blind here. Also there was no bright spot when I viewed stars only when it was on Saturn, it was like the brighter larger image caused it, I dunno I'm gonna try em during the day and again at night. I wanna get some zoom ep's for it so I can lower the magnification and see if that helps, it looks like if I lowered the magnification a little they would focus real well..... also, so you're saying the focal reducer isn't really necessary if I'm not having trouble seeing things, it's only if I wanna fit something large into view? It won't improve the image of any DSO's? Everything says lower f ratio is best for DSO's so I thought I'd try it but I noticed no difference really. Also it's just a cheaper .5x svbony f/r it just screws on the back of the lens, I could t afford the celestron 6.3 f/r, I don't know if that would make a difference....

Yea I tried the binoviewerast night and they focused but not all the say as crisp as I would have liked, it seemed the 20mm episode were too powerful or something which should not be the case. I could see good enough but if the focus would have been just a little more crisp it would have been perfect. Then there was a double image of Saturn but I got it to dial in to just one image by turning the eyepieces, apparently they have focus knobs, I was not aware of that, but even after all that there was a bright spit in the center field of view, it didn't prevent me from seeing anything but it was just like an illuminated circle in the middle. And as far as DSO objects go like Hercules globular cluster or verious other M objects I can't see see anything like that very good with these. I'm very frustrated with them. I feel like for 300 dollars they should work better than this, much better. Also I tried the focal reducer and I don't think I'm doing it right, it was this tiny little image that made everything harder to see, its supposed to help with DSO's right? I have never used a focal reducer before, so maybe I'm doing it wrong I dunno, but it looked like a small image and super zoomed out the Hercules cluster was so small I could barely even see a white fuzz blob. I took it out so I was back at f/10 and I could resolve it very well and put in a 20mm ep and it looked even better... so I dunno... in not having good luck with my new stuff 😕 SMH, the telescope is awesome my single ep's work great, the binoviewer and focal reducer leave me feeling completely hopeless and ready to pull my hair out. Lol.

Starwatcher thanks for all the detailed info, I will definitely try that, and yes I was wondering if the focus know was broken haha or maybe they just work different and don't come to a full stop. I'm gonna try that experiment for sure that should definitely clear things up. I just got a focal reducer too so good to know, I probably would have started to panic if that wouldn't have worked either haha. Thanks to all for the info 'll try it out.

They work with the refractor alright, the SCT is what I'm having trouble with.

Yes I have to use the Barlow on the 4 inch refractor. I feel like when I added the Barlow it almost got more put of focus, I tried it with the 2x Barlow, tried it with the low power Barlow extension piece it came with, tried it without the extension piece. I'm gonna try it during the day today and see what's going on, cause I love the binoviewers and I was so excited to try them on the sct cause the images are just so crisp I couldn't wait for the more "3d" effect they provide. I only tried them looking at stars, maybe I should try it on something bigger like the moon or planets. You're suggestion of an extension tube might help, I was thinking maybe it needed a tube with a few inches since everyone says how the binos create a 100mm optical path etc, but I didn't know if you can just get an extension tube that isn't a Barlow. Also yes I'm using a 1.25 inch diagonal and also it's not the HD so I don't have those knobs... Ugh, I hope I can figure this out, I really wanna be able to use those.

I just bought a pair of William optics binoviewers and a 8" nextsar evolution, love the telescope, and I want to love the binoviewers as well but I just can't reach focus. I've read articles and I tried the Barlow lens solution, it didn't work. The bino's worked in my 4"inch refractor so what I don't understand is why won't they work in an 8"sct that has much higher quality optics. I really wanna get those working, only using single eyepieces gets tedious after an hour or so with all the strain on the one eye. So any advice would be very much appreciated. Do I just need a higher magnification Barlow lens maybe. Lemme know your thoughts thanks.