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Hello, I have a russian telescope TAL 200K and I would like to upgrade it by using a tracking goto system. I have read about a H-EQ5 Pro system but I find it quite expensive and I am wondering if it would be possible to find it as second hand in Europe or a more affordable alternative. Any suggestion ? Cristian

After many hours spent tweaking and playing around with my AZ-GTi for the past year or so, I'm ready to move up to a more long-term mount and plead the wisdom of this fine group for some considered recommendations. Things I care about: Equatorial GoTo Imaging, guided for both DSOs and planetary Portable, so low weight is paramount* Minimum imaging payload of ~10kg** Good track record of reliability, both hardware and software I'll continue to be using my AAP for a while so software compatibility is important < €2.5K I've got a shortlist which looks like this: iOptron Vixen iOptron CEM40 / GEM45 SXD2 CEM26 / GEM28EC Payload (sans cw) 18 15 12.7 Weight (head) 7.2 8.8 4.5 Price 2400 2600 2430 Comment Seems like the best option, on paper, at least. Portable enough with payload that'll last me a while and generally seems like I it's unlikely I'll get a lemon. Not the greatest payload to weight ratio, and the priciest of the bunch, but there's an assumed inherent quality, it coming from Vixen. In their EC variant, the 26/28 reach the same price as the 40/45 series. I'm going to guide anyway so wondering if that RA encoder is worth it? Lightest of the bunch, but also flimsiest from what I read. But I'm very open to other options, so please do recommend! * In an ideal world, I'd go for the RST-135 in a heartbeat. But it's near twice my budget so it's a non-starter, sadly. ** A C8 equivalent is the heaviest I'll ever put on it. Not because I don't want to go heavier, but because my bad back would have words with me if I would dare huck a chonker around.

I threw an opinion into the mix in the beginners forum the other night and decided I should expand on my reasoning here. Even somewhere as benign as SGL, you still have to remember this IS the internet. That means opinions repeated enough by people with large post counts, gain credence as fact among the rest of the forum. It does not hurt to challenge that, if only to get people thinking, as long as you do it in a reasoned way. So..... What got me thinking was the humble 8" Dob. For instance, I've noticed that the most recommended scope for a beginner is an 8" Dob; 10" if there's a sniff of the OP having a bit more to spend. The thing is, a rake of this recommendation appears straight off the bat, without further quizzing of the OP, but for most newbies, I think it is wrong. True, a great many people started there and went on to bigger (some might say better) things, but a lot do not. You don't have to be Poirot to notice it's also the most sold scope on Ebay, along with the EPs it came with; reasons (excuses) of needing the space, etc, being given. The ratio of 8" Dobs for sale on Ebay is greater than on here. A lot of people don't stick with it long enough to achieve the fifty posts required for access to the classifieds. Why? Because if you don't know your way around the skies, you'll find it really hard to find stuff and you'll break your back grovelling around doing so. It is also a scope that will likely be way off the mark in collimation out of the box and be harsh on the rather basic EPs* it came with. When I started, my Explorer 200p only showed half the primary when looking down the focuser. They really can arrive that far out of whack and dealers these days are driven by price, so they are extremely unlikely to have seen more than the outside of the box you've been shipped. Few would actually check the scope and if they did, most people would whine they're too expensive. Service costs. So, if you do find something on your first light with your new scope and then pop in the 10mm MA it came with, it will look rubbish. De-collimate your scope with a half decent EP and have a crack at Jupiter. It's not impressive and that's as easy as it gets. For a n00b, it's confusion time. In other words, it's not the most intuitive scope, it has a built in steep learning curve just to get it to work and requires immediate upgrades just to get near what this, admittedly capable scope in the right hands, can deliver. The 8" Dob is best suited to someone who has at least used binos, or a friend's scope. That way, they'll have advice on hand. So my contention is that, in this push button, battery driven age, the ideal beginners scope is a 127mm AZ GOTO Mak. I can hear the hackles rising, so let me justify this. I'm not interested in the cries of 'It needs to be level, it needs to be pointed North!'. That involves a bubble level and the one star everybody knows. People who get the date format wrong should RTFM! Anyway, if this is tricky, how are they going to get along with a Planisphere? No, the learning curve is minimal and when the crisp little optics and it's long FL, which is easy on cheap EPs hits a target, it's going to be a sharp view. If it doesn't hit the target first time, the erstwhile n00b will slew around a bit and unless they're complete attention deficient, will hit the target. This is my point. Getting the first few targets a newcomer sees to be clear, is the hook that keeps them engaged. Jupiter will look good in a Mak. Saturn at any size when sharp is unforgettable. The moon will look amazing and M42, M57, globs, etc, will be good enough to show people there's a universe out there they hadn't even considered. I know an 8" Dob will do these subjects better, but it's not exactly Wow! territory. There are plenty of atmospheric UK nights and particularly from suburban locations, where a 5" Mak might actually do these subjects better. Now I know that hardly anybody reading this will still have their first scope, but if one of these had been, it would still be a great little grab 'n' go, plus a handy mount for an 80mm ED/Apo for the same purpose, plus white light solar, etc, etc. Nobody who starts in the hobby with an 8" Dob stays there. In the long run, rationally, the humble 5" Mak GOTO is a very handy little weapon on a number of levels and one that has uses further down the line. Russell * One of the scopes I bought at a time when my collimation learning curve had long since flattened off, came with the usual 10 & 25mm MAs. For a laugh, I thought I'd give them a go. You know what? In a 300mm F4.9 Dob, they weren't that bad. The deficiency I recalled, was in fact, mostly mine in terms of collimation - It was far easier to blame the EPs and post yet another 'What EP for a n00b' thread....

At around 14.35 GMT today I observed Venus, Mercury and Jupiter, with my 127mm Mak SLT GoTo. Venus was a large, very thin crescent, trembly in poor seeing. Mercury was easy to see once I got my eye in, and Jupiter was easier to pick out with a red filter. Mercury and Jupiter are now not far apart. (7min RA 3 deg Dec.) The visibility of Mercury seems dependent on atmospheric clarity. On several days recently I looked for it but could not see it.

Aided by GoTo, I observed Venus in daylight this afternoon. It is only a few days from inferior conjunction (26th) and appears as a large thin crescent. It's in an unfavorable position for Northern nocturnal observers and appeared almost below the Sun. I could not see Mercury (which should have been accessible). And before you comment, I checked carefully where the 127mm Mak was pointing before putting my eye to the eyepiece.?

Hi, this is probably a daft question, i've searched and can't find an answer. With the Goto scopes (like the Skywatcher 127 Mak AZ Goto), do they automatically zoom correctly as well as point at the object you choose ?

Hi all, my first post post here and thought I'd dive right in, sorry if this is done to death as there are a few very similar posts but figure my prime requirement is slightly different. xmas present from the wife is a telescope, she's been scouring eBay etc with a budget of 200-250. She's identified the sky watcher 127 synscan as a good option. im completely new to observing. Don't really know what I want out of it. We do a fair bit of camping with the kids and always enjoy looking at the sky at night. So that's what this is for main requirements portability - needs to fit in the car with our camping gear. If it's massive or really heavy we'll probably not take it out as much. auto setup - as automatic as humanly possible please and I like my gadgets lol something like the goto system which can take you on a tour or point/track specific objects optionally: terrestrial use camera/webcam/Ccd for pictures- not sure if I'll really need that but great if it's possible. so far it looks like the sky watcher 127 goto and the celestron equivalent are front runners. I've also found the celestron 4se which seems to tick the boxes. The 5se would be lovely but out of budget from what I can see. Are any of these bad choices? They are all mak setups(?) which we thought gave us the benifit of a more compact unit. anything else we should be thinking about/considering? - I'll probably be powering it direct from the 12v on the Landrover so will need a suitable cable. cheers!

Hi everyone So i have a problem with the synscan controller v4, when i want to update to the last version, first of all i connect and put the control in the update version, and then connect to computer and the program detects the controller. Then when i press updated to the Version 4.39.10, it only goes to 1.8%, sometimes to the 5% but not further. Then i updated to a low version 4.2, and it updated the control but does not work with the mount anyways. Hope you can help me.

Hi everyone, I'm looking to get a reasonably portable astrophotography set-up, using a 60-100mm refractor, with a suitable goto mount. I spotted the Explore Scientifice exos2-gt with pmc-eight goto system, which looks like quite an elegant solution, and wondered if anybody in the forum owns this mount, and what they think of it's performance & usability?

Greetings, I'm super happy to have found this forum of night sky enthusiasts and look forward to learning and sharing on this site! I am an amateur stargazer fortunate to live in a rural area with great dark skies. I'm used to using a GoTo Celestron. Unfortunately I'm having a problem with a newly purchased Orion SkyQuest XTg 10. I've only used it a couple of times. Recently, when I turn on the power, the hand controller (a SynScan V4 GoTo, version 04.39.04) states a message "Both axes...no response!" which means the motors won't work. I've unplugged all the cords & replugged to no avail. The power comes from a new Orion Dynamo Pro, 12 V, Lithium Power Supply which was recommended. Does anyone have any ideas what the problem might be? Thank you

I tried to use the GoTo function on the Nexstar SLT 130 for the first time last night. I got through all the steps to set in date, time, place etc. But When I have to find 3 objects in the night sky, I have to use the direction buttons on the handset, whenever I press one of those 4 buttons, the handset just dies out. The screen becomes green, it says nothing on it, until 1-2 minutes later, it says something about error 16 or 17. Keep in mind that the whole handset works up until the point I have to use it to align. What this means is that my scope does not move up or down, nor right or left, since it just shuts down. What I've tried: - Change batteries (AA's) - Try to use a power supply - Updated the firmware in the handset to the latest version What could be the problem? - Mehtevas

Hi Everyone. Hoping you can guide me in the right direction or give some advice. I was given a Celestron Astromaster 70AZ telescope as a gift and have so far managed to locate and view Jupiter with an Android app. I subsequently came across a youtube clip were the guy demonstrated on how to add a DSLR / mobile phone adapter to his telescope as a way to converting his budget telescope to a push / go-to by clipping his mobile phone on top of his telescope and using the star finder app, be able to locate his target and then using his finder scope. Please note that I am not trying to Astrophotography (yet). However, I am unable to find any mounting clips / mobile phone adapters I can buy to add onto my telescope. Any suggestions or ideas how I can make this work? Below is what I mean on how I want to attach my mobile phone on top of my telescope. Your help will be appreciated! AC South Africa

Hi, I have Bresser EXOS II EQ5 mount with dual motor drive. Want to upgrade to GOTO + guiding support. Read many negative reviews about GOTO Upgrade kit given by Bresser. So wanted to know are there really such issues like incorrect GOTO, loud noise while slewing etc. If yes, then as an alternative can we use Sky-watcher Synscan GOTO upgrade kit with Bresser EXOS II EQ5 mount? Will it work? Thanks! - Abhijit Juvekar

I am just in the process of buying my first telescope. There’s so much information it’s making it very difficult what to choose! I have decided to buy a GoTo telescope but I can’t find any information which answers my query. Basically, can you use a GoTo telescope without using the computer part and use it as you would manual one? Any advice would be gratefully received!

Hey, I've been looking for a mount for my 8 inch skywatcher reflector for a while now and can't decide what mount to buy. The requirements i am looking for are the following: Goto system or synscan 10+ kg weight capacity Tripod My budget is around £500. I was wondering if anyone could suggest some good mounts or point me into the right direction. My goal is to get better at astrophotography, my previous mount was a dobson mount ( which came with the scope ) but does not have any features to track objects which doesn't help when doing astrophotography. Tnanks

Hi, I have a Sky-Watcher Skyliner 300P FlexTube GOTO which I am enjoying however after a period of no use the base has become very stiff. My fault, as it became wet not realising that the cover I had bought for it was not waterproof. Looking through the threads in here I found one which I followed to try to strip down the base however I have become stuck at the point of trying to remove the motor housing from the base after removing the 4 machine screws. I suspect that it is a combination of corrosion and the base material swelling which is preventing me from removing the motor from the base. When I release the worm gear from the static gear using the release lever the motor turns easily which is what is fuelling my suspicion. Any advice or suggestions would be useful as I've come to a halt in my investigation for the moment. It looks to me like I'm going to need a new base which may be a better bet anyway as the original supplied is heavy and definitely not good in the damp. Dom

I understand the goto upgrade for the EQ 2/3 fits the CG4 as they are essentially the same mount (albeit different tripods). Has anyone tried this and could they tell me: How easy it is to fit? How well does it work? I am wondering whether to go for this or the dual axis motors which would also be a useful upgrade to track something at high magnification or for simple AP.

Hello all, this is my first post at SGL, and it will be quite long. I am not native a English speaker, so please excuse any mistake. I have quite some plan with my telescope mount and its goto control, and I am looking for some feedback and comments. If somebody else did a similar project, please let me know. And please feel free and encouraged to make suggestions, ideas, critics, etc. The story in a few buzzwords: Raspberry Pi Zero → direct control of TMC2209 stepper drivers via the Pi's Uart serial interface to drive my telescope mount. I am writing a software (optionally: open source?) to control the mount. The language will NOT be C, as typically used for Microcontrollers (I know for instance OneStep) I am using Kotlin, which is a more advanced JVM language. I think this should be enough information to filter the readers who are interested in reading the rest of my post. Now the long and detailed story: My professional background: I am a physicist, and did a PhD in EE (Power Electronics). Later, I became software engineer. Besides being fascinated by Astronomy, I am a tinkerer (Reprap 3D printer, electronics, …). I did grind my first mirror (a 6'' Schiefspiegler) when I was 15 years old, and I built the cookbook CCD cameras in the 90's. After many years without a telescope (study time, relationship, ... ), I settled down with my family, and I started to get back to Astronomy. Recently, I did by a quite a massive second hand mount: the “Vixen New Atlux” from another other stargazer in Switzerland. My opinion is that the New Atlux' mechanical design is superb. It has (had...) internal wiring, the counterweight bar can be hidden in the mount for transport, good polar alignment screws, it has an excellent polar finder with a dimmable LED. But on the other hand the electronics: two weak servo motors in combination with the incredible Starbook 5.... Seigh... the starbook...(!) it is, well... the mount is just superb, and no more comments about the starbook game boy, which shall rest in peace at the garbage dump. I removed the servos and all electronics, and I put 2 stepper motors into the mount, which are coupled to the gear with a timed belt. My original plan was to put an Arduino into the mount in order to control the steppers. I have an old goto Celestron cg-5 with Starsense, and it would have been quite easy to mimic - with the Arduino as interface – the servos of the old cg-5 and translate the Starsense control signals to my New Atlux. I can write C, and there is even an open source project called OneStep, which uses a Microcontroller in a similar way as I do. But I don't like to write C code anymore. In the 3D printer community, people need to use real time electronics to control the printer steppers. Due to the real time requirement, C with a real time microcontroler (Arduino & similar) are the only option for 3D printers. Do we need real time for our telescope? No. We don't need to control a lot of Motor accelerations and high speed control. For the telescope, we need to set the Motors speed precisely, and we need to drive to any position in an accurate and controllable and slow way. Then, there are new stepper motor drivers available with as much as 256 microsteps. The TMC2209 stepper driver , which is very well know in the 3D printer community, is not vibrating at all. It runs just smoothly, also at very low speeds. I do drive my motor with 0.25 rpm (sideral speed). In case of a slew, I can accelerate to 1500x sideral speed, which also would allow me easily to track the ISS. Wonderful. The current status of my project is: The mount is equipped with the two new motors The TMC2209 drivers are connected to the Raspberry pi GPIO Interface, and I can control them via Software. Theoretically, I could attach up to 4 motors with a single Uart interface (1 wire protocol). For instance, a focuser or a filter wheel could be attached. I selected Kotlin as language. Java also would have been possible, but I think for a new project, Kotlin will lead to a much more readable code. The TMC drivers can be driven via a chip-internal clock signal. Different to what the 3D printer community is doing (they use the step / dir pins, and create every single microstep with the microcontoller), I can send a “speed” signal from the Raspi via UART to the 2209 chip, and it will execute this speed for me without any further action. The only time critical issue was that I need to precisely count the steps that the 2209 stepper drivers executed. This is done via a GPIO pin, receiving its index signal (a pulse for every 2209 fullstep). Here comes the pain with Linux (non real-time) and the Pi: For user programs, it is impossible to guarantee that every pulse from the stepper drivers will be registered. But I cannot afford to have a step count drift over time. The solution was that I wrote a Linux kernel module in C. I wrote that I don't want to write any C code. Well, a few lines for the kernel module were indeed necessary. I can live with that, having in mind that the rest will be written in Kotlin. The only task of the Kernel module is to count every registered step at the Pi's GPIO input pins. This kernel module output is then mapped to a character device file in /dev/ for every stepper. In Kernel space, it is possible to register and count interrupts without missing even any one of them. From a hardware point of view, this is indeed everything we I need. The project cost so far: 2x10€ for the stepper drivers, 2x10€ for the motors, 2x20€ for the tooth belts and pulley, 10€ Pi Zero plus some peripheral expenses: Micro SD card, USB charger, and 1200 € for the used Vixen new Atlux mount. And a lot of time. I have so many ideas on how to extend the ecosystem of my software, but these ideas are for the longer term (maybe years from now on): Multi-star alignment. The alignment should be able to be updated continuously during an observation night. With a set of stars, it should be possible to calculate the quality of the aligment points, and e.g. drop them if they are errorneous. PEC correction (should be easy on the Pi) End-Stop support The polar alignment routines of today's goto scopes are quite good. But what I would like to have is some audio-feedback when I move the alignment screws into the right direction. Possibility to pre-plan an observation night (e.g. the mount could tell you that the Jupiter moon shadow will be on Jupiter in a few minutes). Record the telescope movements during the night in order to be able to tag any picture. The TMC drivers have much more capability than what I am using currently. For instance, they could be current controlled for slews in order to set the stepper current exactly to the value that it needs without stalling. This saves a lot of energy. The TMC drivers have a feature called “Stall Guard”. This could be used instead of endstop switches (for 3D-printers, this is done frequently). Advanced options for tracking: siderial, solar, moon speed, ISS speed. Tracking in both axis (e.g. to compensate polar misalignments of atmospheric refraction) or just in right ascension. Commercial mounts do not allow much customization here. With slow slew speeds, 5V input via a USB-C cable is sufficient for the Pi + Motors. Usb-C and newer usb battery packs allow to output a higher voltage via USB. With an “USB-trigger”, the input voltage can be selected to my needs. Higher voltage allows higher slew speeds, but consumes more power. Autoguider support, or even better: simply connect a webcam via the Pi's USB connector and do the guiding on the Pi The Raspberry Pi touch screen could be used for telescope controlls Advanced German mount limits and meridian flip control (e.g. a warning about a necessary flip when driving to a specific goto target). An Android App, connected via WiFi to the Pi could be used as display alternative Language control (have a look at Mycroft, an open-source artificial intelligence). "Hey mount, please slew to the whirlpool galaxy!" Control the mount via SkySafari and Stellarium The Pi has a built in camera interface. How about an open source auto align? The Pi could look at the stars to align itself, which makes a lot of sense. I did already order a long focal length lens and monochrome camera from Arducam in order to do some experiments (the standard Pi camera has 3.5 mm focal length and is not really usable, although star imagining is possible). My first observation site is my balcony. And there, the real Starsense does not work at all. It always spin-loops on 2 alignment positions where the sky is covered by the roof – how silly is that?. This can be done better. Further, Starsense is doing only a initial alignment. It should update its position and accuracy over the time! I think I could do this better. Besides all my ideas, the first and most important focus of the software will be: Readability (therefore my choice of Kotlin), extensibility and open source. I like to have the Maths of the internal mount model clearly visible and understandable in the software. The calculations that are done within all our goto mounts are no rocket science. I admit, I am the nerd guy who wants to go the hard way and implement this from scratch. I am looking for a good project name, do you have any suggestions? How about QuickStep? this is possibly too close to OneStep and would offend the creators of OneStep? Does anyone of you have interest in joining my plan? Doing such a project in a small group would be more encouraging then just doing it for myself. And of course later on, I would appreciate if other stargazers would update their old mounts with my software. Any comments on my project plan are welcome! Clear Skies! Andy

Hi all, I want to share with you my so far best image of Saturn, taken using: 305/1500 goto dob Skywatcher QHY-5 mono IR-UV block filter Baader barlow 2.25 Registax, stack of 40 images, postprocessing