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Hello everyone from SheikhK - First View


sheikhk

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Hello everyone,

I just received my first telescope ever yesterday. It was a early birthday present from my wife. I chose a Celestron Nexstar 8SE with a free 10mm EP and a moon filter. I was at work all day, but the knowledge that my telescope was at home waiting for me made me very excited indeed and I couldn't wait to get home.

I am a complete newbie to all of this. Growing up watching all the StarTrek episodes (original series, TNG, Voyager and a few DS9), I have always been absolutely fascinated by space.

I recently watched Brian Cox and Wonders of the Universe and it really got me excited.

I have spent a month watching youtube videos, reading so many articles and spending hours speaking to shop keepers about telescopes, I began thinking about the SkyWatcher 127 and ended up buying the Celestron Nexstar 8SE.

I live in Sutton Coldfield, Birmingham. After spending an hour unwrapping all the bubble wrap and carefully putting my scope together, I was ready to take my first peek at the heavens.

It was cloudy...everytime I tried to align my scope using the "skyAlign" feature, the clouds would quickly cover the star that I was looking at. I took my scope from the front of my house to the back garden several times in an attempt to catch a bright star. I spent 2 hours trying but in the end I thought to retreat. I went inside, had a cup of tea and thought of a plan. I decided that I would wait 2 hours and then try again. Hey presto! it worked, the sky was relatively clear, although it seemed to be drizzly weather and I was scared that my scope would get wet. Nevertheless, I braved it and started trying to align my scope.

I tried 3 times but it kept on saying "Alignment Unsuccessful". In the end I chose to purchase an app on my iphone that identified what I was looking at. I realised that I was looking at "Vega". So I chose the one star alignment procedure and it worked. My scope was finally aligned. Happy Days!

I put in the 25 mm eye piece and pointed it at Vega. I saw nothing in the display. At first I thought that the focus was out or that I had missed taking off some protection cap from the EP but I could see through the EP clearly when I used the light from my phone so why didn't it work. Was I going to be disappointed? Was my scope faulty? Was I doing something wrong? I rushed indoors to read the manual again in an attempt to rectify the situation. No joy. It spoke about collination in case the scope was knocked about a bit during transit. I thought at this stage that I should just wait till the morning to speak to the nice guys at Rother Valley, from whom I purchased my scope.

I fell asleep on the sofa and woke up first thing to make the call. I spoke to Adam who advised that it was better to align using SkyAlign and the 3 star method. LOL. Great. I had to try again tonight.

Hopefully I will have more success today.

Thanks everyone for spending time reading through my post. Any suggestions or tips are most welcome.

Regards,

Khurrum

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Hi there and welcome.

We all had and still have nights like that, well I do on a regular basis.

With practice and time it will all get better.

Just have fun with it there is no rush.

Lets face it those stars and the like have been there a long long time and they will still be there for many many tomorrows to come.

Best of luck with the new scope and the best past time in the world.

Graham

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Hi Khurrum and welcome to SGL :BangHead:

If the weather forecast is good for later, you can allways leave it outside under a cover. It needs to cool down to ambient temperature and it will take about an hour. But keep it protected so it doesn't get wet, this is standard practise. Enjoy the forum ;)

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Welcome Khurrum!

Hope you get a better result with the alignment tonight. I had problems initially too. Have you alligned you finder with the scope as this was what hampered me?

Happy gazing!

Thank you all for the wonderful warm welcome and advice. How do you align the finder with the scope? I just thought that it slides on.

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It will slide on but that doesn't automatically align it with the tube. You'll need to realign it every session. Do it in daylight and use a distant object like top of a pylon or church spire. Get the image dead central in the main scope then adjust the finder so it's cross hairs are on the same place.

Do this first with a 25mm eyepiece, then when you change to a 10mm you'll see it's still out, but you should only need minor adjustments to the finder to get it on song. Remember you'll be working with very distant objects and a tiny degree out on Earth will translate to huge, unimaginable distances up there :BangHead:

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Hi Kuhrrum and welcome to the forum. Congratulations on a great scope and don't worry about any difficulties getting yourself set up, we've all experienced them too and so we are here to help. One suggestion though, whether you buy one or better still make one, you will need a dew shield tube that slides over the front of the scope and projects some 8-9" in front of it. This will prevent stray light coming into the scope and so the shield will help maintain image contrast but more importantly, it will stop dew attaching itself to the front of the scope. You won't realise this when it happens until you suddenly notice that the image loses detail and appears foggy and then you'll notice that the scope is absolutely dripping. Dew won't harm the scope as it's sterile water but as you get more and more into your observing, not having a shield will shorten your available observing time which is increasingly more valuable given the weather we're experiencing.

Clear skies

James

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Hi Khurrum and welcome

It's so frustrating trying to align a scope in part cloudy weather - I know how you feel. A 3 star align is obviously better than a 1 star - but, even a 1 star align should work - as said in other replies I think your problem is the finder scope alignment, so good luck tonight!

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hi and a very warm welcome to the sgl. what you have experianced was "the curse of the new telescope". every one who gets a new scope, newbee or advanced gets the curse of bad weather, do not be put off, astronomy is the best hobby its got the lot. if i were to advise you on buying a book it would be "turn left at orion", within it has all the star clusters in plain easy text, well woth a look.

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Welcome Khurrum. When things don't go to plan, take a little rest, have a favourite beverage and relax..:)

A few deep breaths later and it'll all "click".

Enjoy!! Like Graham said, the stars will be around for a while yet, there's no rush :eek:

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