Skywatcher RA pointer

[Sully]

Quick question for you all, have been thick and set up my mount wrong.

Is the pointer on the RA cirlce (Skywatcher 130 EQ2) meant to be at the back, under the scope? Makes it very dificult to line up if it is. Just set it up as it came out of the box.

Any advice welcome.

Cheers

Sully

[brantuk]

I would ignore the setting circles - they aren't accurate enough to use properly on EQ2, and they would just be a pain fiddling with them in the dark. Have you downloaded Stellarium? Much better for finding stuff (and it's free)

[Sully]

I have Stellarium, I also have the problem of being in quite light polluted area, so was hoping to use the cirlcles as a guide, as star hoping seems quite hard with the limited visual stars.

[Sully]

Just to add to that, I read elsewhere that it helps to have a good EP with a Known FOV, ie 1 degree, to help with star hoping, could anyone recommend a decent name to look for £30-50ish.

[brantuk]

There's absolutely nothing against trying to use the setting circles and if you can make them work for you then that's great. I tried with my first EQ3-2 and just ended up getting confused and frustrated.

Star hopping won't be difficult though. If you follow the guides in the center pages of Sky at Night or Astronomy Now each month you very quickly get to learn the constellations and where the interesting objects are within them.

The first thing you'll need to concentrate on is getting the mount polar aligned - then get used to the movement of the scope and how to point and track, then if you still feel the need for the setting circles by all means have a bash

[Sully]

Thanks Brantuk

Will definetley look up the guides. I think I have the polar alignment sussed because when i do find an object its pretty easy to keep in view with minimal adustment, the red dot finder is great for the visibles. just the fainter stuff thats a pain. But i'll definetly persevere.

[brantuk]

The fainter stuff will be harder to spot more because you only have a 130 scope. The fainter objects require larger apertures for effective viewing. But that said - there's billions of things to look at and plenty of brighter objects to keep you going for a long while yet. You should be able to see most if not all the messiers eg.

You'll know how good your polar alignment is if it's tracking in a single plane (RA only) with just the odd tweak in Dec - by and large you'll be following an object by turning only one of the control knobs

[Andy69]

Must admit having just bought my first telescope I'm having similar issues to Sully. I've got a Skywatcher 200P on the eq5 mount and I imagined that I'd be able to get fairly close using the setting circles but I think my problem has been not understanding how to use them. I've spent a fair bit of time this weekend reading various articles and I think I've now got a better idea as to how they work. Problem is now waiting for a clear night to put the theory into practice.

I've thought about trying the star hopping method and again I suspect I just need more practice but what makes it difficult is that even the view through the finder scope shows many more stars than I'm seeing with the naked eye so for a beginner its difficult to resolve the two views to know I'm in exactly the right place.

The main frustration though is not having the weather to practice more, if I could have ordered a week of clear skies along with the scope I'd be able to make a lot more progress

[Tinker1947]

I went for M15 last night, its right in the middle between Altair and Markab both bright stars, M15 took a couple of minutes to find and came out as a small fuzzy grey blob. I done away with the finder scope and use a red dot finder.

[Andy69]

I hadn't come across the red dot finders but one could be just what I'm looking for. Do they have to be mounted in place of the finder scope or can they be attached as well.

It seems to me for fainter objects I might still need the finder scope to see and center a target. Or do people just use a RDF and a low power eye piece in the main telescope to locate objects?

[Sully]

The red dot finder is great for getting you in the basic area, then the fun starts! Trying to get your head round the up's down an lefts right bit while trying to star hop???

[gooseholla]

You can get red dots with the dove tail shoe for replacing finder scopes or you can get them with adhesive so that you can stick them anywhere... but you might want to secure it with a bit more, as mine, for example, keeps coming off.