Newb: The story so far...

[marshy123]

This is my first proper post and I thought I would go to town and post my exploits thus far with installing and setting up my telescope at my new house. Might be interesting reading for fellow newbies / groanworthy for experienced gazers!

Perhaps if you notice anything glaringly silly you might be good enough to point it out.

Where I get to an actual question or need help I have made it lime green in case you just want to whip through the salient points.

Background is I bought a Skywatcher 130pm newt reflector on an eq2 mount about a year ago. Started researching but had to move house twice before I got it properly set up. Reverted to naked eye and junk binoculars for a good few months. I have now stopped moving house every 20 minutes and have bagged a bit of garden dedicated to observing.

Gear is:

Pentax k-x DSLR which I've had for years

k-mount t-adaptor

Philips SPC900nc (re housed with air cooling mod)

windows 7 (64 bit) laptop (quad phenom 1.8ghZ, 4Gb ram)

skywatcher 130p newtonian reflector

stock red dot finder

10 and 25 stock eyepieces

stock 2x barlow

eq2 GEM (flimsy little devil!)

polarising lunar filter

Bit of a cheapy scope and mount but I have very little money. I am mad on DIY everything, an utter perfectionist and detail-obsessive.

Aims are to locate, view and then snap (in this order)

1. moon (cos it's big and bright, innit)

2. planets

3. constellations

4. deep-sky stuff, maybe collect M numbers

5. the sun (my ultimate aim but I'm going nowhere near it until I totally know what I'm doing!)

Installation and setup

First I levelled the ground roughly and, having bumped the Skywatcher EQ2 tripod several times while trying to point the leading leg roughly north, had the bright idea of taking off the feet, bolting some leftover shed base spikes to the tripod and driving them 2ft into the ground:

It's totally solid, you can jump up and down next to it (believe me, I'm not light!) and there is no discernable vibration. All bolts checked, greased and tightened. Lovely. The tiles are the wife's idea so I don't trample mud through the house. Not quite level yet though.

Now I'm very new to this so have been reading heavily and taking my time. I decided the next step was to level the head (flat round bit) of the tripod so I removed the bulk of the mount assembly. This, I have now found, is much easier if you remove the tube and counterweight first.

Much spirit level and ocd-grade bolt tweaking action later I got the head pretty much perfectly level through the centre / three leg positions:

I then jumped around a bit to check stability, kicked and knocked the tripod, spikes and ground and checked the level. Bang on.

Having been frustrated by the quality of the mount mechanism in the past, I next decided to take it to pieces, completely degrease it with muc-off bike degreaser and put on some nice teflon bike grease. Replacing the chinese aviation-grade molasses with some nice teflon grease has really improved the experience of using the mount. Much easier, smoother and fewer jerks. I would recommend this to anyone with an EQ2.

Polar aligning next. Oh dear. I have been reading about polar aligning for a couple of weeks and decided I would get it spot on first time. Ha ha. While de-greasing I even came up with the idea of putting the bottom part of the mount onto the tripod with the RA axle still left out and using this like a polar scope.

Now this is the first thing I don't understand - if RA pivots around this hole, surely if my base is level I should be able to set altitude to 53 degrees (north nottingham is 52.9) and then look up at polaris through this hole and adjust azimuth until polaris is centered. This did not work. With altitude set to 53 and azimuth rotated towards polaris I was way too low in the sky. Is it possible the altitude scale is this far off? I've read it might be a bit off but getting Polaris approximately centered through the RA axle hole required an altitude of 56 degrees according to the scale.

[i decided this was not the way forward as I re-mounted and did a load more calibration and had no luck whatsoever. I may come back and investigate later as something tells me this should be a really good way of lining up RA axis with polaris in the absence of a polar scope]

Balancing I found fairly easy. Did it in daylight a couple of days ago, first by balancing the length of the tube (Dec axis) and then balancing tube against counter weights. Tested this with a 25mm EP centered on a distant lamppost. Lamppost didn't move in 20 minutes with RA and DEC locks fully released. Good stuff.

Red dot alignment was similarly breezy. No problems getting this lined up with a 25mm EP in daylight. Seems a little play in it though so might have to revisit this.

I decided I was a bit too obsessed with getting polar alignment completely perfect at this early stage and should get on with looking at stuff. Basically I opted for a quick polar alignment routine I read about; set DEC to 90 degrees on the fixed setting circle, set altitude to 53 degrees on the scale, pull the counter weight so it's more or less straight down, then rotate azimuth towards polaris. This looked OK but was still way too low in the sky. Again 56 degrees and azimuth rotation got me spot on polaris in the centre of a 25mm EP. I left it for 20 minutes and came back. The view in the EP was this:

I thought this would be fine for now. Loosened RA and DEC, swung round to the moon (number 1 in the list, remember) and it was centred beautifully in the 25mm EP, wonderfully lit and a real joy to see. I have rarely experienced such satisfaction in my life.

I even went and got the wife as she had had a bad day. It looked so good it really cheered her up.

I looked at it for ages then strapped on the DSLR. Needs balancing properly but got there and tracked OK with manually adjusting RA. This was the best of about a dozen snaps.

Bit blurry, would this be focusing? Exposure was 1/10 sec and ISO was 800 so wouldn't expect motion blur?

For a laugh I also had a crack at what I think was Mars.

Hilarious!

This was snapped handheld through a 25mm EP with a 50mm lens on the DSLR. Quite like it.

I then stuck the SPC900nc in to have a play. Got some video with K3CCD and WcCTRL but not had a chance to look at it properly yet.

That's me so far then. Sorry for the rambling but I think it has at least helped me take stock of what I've done up to now and where to go next. I'll try to keep the posts a bit snappier in future!

Comments gratefully received.

Cheers

Chris

[Probablynot]

I think this was a great post! A very well recorded experience of a newbie's initial setting up.

Sorry, I don't have the experience to answer the two questions you posed, but surely some others can'will chip in?

I was surprised to see that you've so solidly anchored your tripod to the ground! So do you leave it out there all the time, braving the elements? I wouldn't have thought of 'East Midlands' as a tripod-benign environment! Although I suppose (eg) Lincolnshire is a bit better for leaving stuff outdoors than the bit of Wales where I've ended up!

Nice pics you posted! And you'll get better!

[marshy123]

Yup, she's out there round the clock. Trade off for super stability I guess. Got a big old tarp from B&Q which I throw over at the end of the night and secure with some pound shop bungee chords. I even leave the RA motor attached although this has its own little waterproof bag.