Help with Canon 600D AP settings please

[Ewan]

Morning all,

Finally got out for a couple of hours last night to try out my 600D on my C8, hmmm not much luck i'm afraid (due to my lack of knowledge only i guess) from 9 - 11pm.

Venus was very low, sky a little hazy so seeing not brilliant either & LP here is terrible.

After a quick align using Last Settings as i know approx where scope should point i chose Venus, tracking was on & good also.

I tried with / without diagonal (shouldnt make a diff apart from position), popped the nosepiece on the T mount then attached to the 600, switched to live view, i centered Venus & used the 3x-10x digital zoom but no matter what i tried could not get a clear image (even without zoom?) the image had a very hazy edge to it & i could not get anywhere near a sharp focus, totally new to me so i will percivere.

I also tried just the Barlow lens in the nosepiece first then onto the T mount then 600 but all i got was a black screen (while scope was still tracking) so not enough focus distance ?, also tried 600 , T mount , nosepiece then 2 X Barlow into tube & also complete black screen & could not find venus at all with lots of inward focus & outward ?

Could someone please help & explain in easy terms what i'm doing wrong as i have seen some great results using the same equipment, i would like to use live view cropped movie mode as well as still shots so some 'standard' settings would be a great help to me if you could ?

I want to purchase some Bob's Knobs for collimating this scope could someone give me a link to the correct ones please as there are quite a few knocking about on the net, i bought the scope a couple of months since, it's the black C8 SGT XLT with the Faststar cover over the secondary mirror (just new cosmetic release i understand) i just don't want to purchase the wrong kit.

many thanks if you can help out a frustrated learner