bosun21

Great that you now have a functioning system now Peter. Hopefully you will come across a solution to your last small hurdle.

All you lucky folks are making me envious. No such cloud gaps for me I’m afraid. At least some of you are getting out there. I really, really must get myself a light G&G set up for these opportunities regardless of how short they are.

Wouldn’t the addition of the virtual port splitter software render this step unnecessary? It splits COM3 into two virtual ports. One for the app and one for the mount.

What about a virtual port splitter for COM3?

Haha, what’s this? Not until Tuesday though. I ain’t going to be holding my breath though.

If planets are your targets I would change to a 90 degree diagonal and purchase a barlow lens. In the future you may want to consider upgrading your eyepieces as Kellners aren’t the best optical quality.

When drying a mirror after washing I use a hairdryer on low to blow all the excess drops off the surface. I then allow it to completely dry the mirror. It’s worked great for me.

It's been dismal here in the UK for a while now. I'm starting to stress with the planets starting to leave our skies 😔.

For the planets you actually want to take short videos of 60-120 seconds with an exposure of between 5-12 ms. Also try and use a smaller region of interest to increase the frame rate although with the manual scope you will need a larger ROI. You can also adjust the gain until you get a decent image on the screen. Capture the video in a SER file of which you can take multiple. Once you have the SER files you need another piece of software called Autostakkert III which will stack the thousands of the best separate images into a single image. Then you want to use the software called Registax to sharpen the final image. This is a rough description of the process and I would advise you to watch some videos on YouTube regarding the software I've mentioned. You definitely don't want to use a reducer on the planets, a barlow on the other hand yes. Good luck.

I own the SW 10” go to flextube dobsonian which is considerably heavier than the standard one. I just fitted longer rubber feet to the base to allow me to slide my sack barrow under it and wheel it around easily. I also did the same thing with my 12” SL dobsonian. One tip is to use a sack barrow with pneumatic tyres. Just wheel it to where you want it and plop it down. I also use bungee cords to hold it securely to the barrow.

Even though I have started doing planetary imaging I am still of the opinion that nothing beats the view through an eyepiece in good seeing. I find that the GRS and EQ bands are pretty easy to distinguish over a range of magnifications. Whether being able to see the GRS itself involves a bit of luck regarding the timing of your observation and the planets rotation. Oh and let's not forget about coinciding with a clear sky. When the above factors do come together the views can be breathtaking ( to me anyway).

Yes, I used a 2" clicklock and a WO diagonal on a C8 which worked fine. There is so much focal travel on SCT's that practically any diagonal will reach focus. I found the 2" diagonal allowed me to use long focal length 2" eyepieces for a wider FOV.

I’m not the OP. I actually have owned several dobsonians from 8” to 12”. I currently own a new 10” go to dobsonian. I have also started planetary imaging recently for which I used a 6” Maksutov but will now use my new dobsonian (when the clouds disappear)

The book "Stargazing under Suburban Skies" explains with diagrams and talks you through the relevant star hops. It also lists suitable targets for suburban skies listed either bronze, silver and gold depending on their difficulty. I'll post a picture of the book tomorrow.

Good images but you need to reduce your exposure next time or use a moon filter.

The finder shoe position on the non pro version is for alt/az mounts and the pro version for EQ mounts. I had to move the shoe on my 150 pro to comfortably use it with a Skytee II mount.

Their add also states that there are many marks and scratches on the telescope. In my opinion a telescope that's been treated this way could also have other faults. But hey that's just my thoughts.

Hi 👋, welcome to SGL.

Your link is to a different scope than the one I bought.

I’ve only owned one achromat and that was a 120 f9. I own a full set of wratten coloured filters and have basically never used them. I will have to try them out more, but with so few clear nights at the moment I hesitate to spend valuable observing time experimenting. Perhaps I should address this in the future.

I actually prefer observing Jupiter unfiltered. I will increase or decrease the magnification until I get the best image for the seeing conditions and then settle down to spend some time on it.

Nothing. It’s a new 10” dobsonian which has the USB port in the handset only and not on the mount itself like the EQ mounts.

Do I need to do a dummy alignment every time?

Still doesn't work with PC Direct mode either. It's definitely the handset IMO.

I can't even see the Synscan WiFi on my phone either.