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Help with new Skywatcher telescope!!

sueella

By sueella
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JamesF

JamesF

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Well, it doesn't look like you have a red dot finder. Looks like you have an optical finder (another mini-telescope). Assembling the finder is something that I don't remember being explained at all well. In particular there's an O-ring (rubber ring about 30mm in diameter) that needs to go in a groove in the body of the finder to hold it into the mount for the finder. The finder goes into the mount with the O-ring at the "sky" end and there should be two screws and a "button" on a spring at the other end to help align the finder with the telescope (that comes later).

Does that help you move forward, or are you just completely stuck for what to do next now?

James

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JamesF

JamesF

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I've never put one of these together myself, so I can't be certain that you've done everything required, but I'll see what I can do. Hopefully others will chip in too :)

The two circular black parts in the centre of the photo (with two screws in) look like they're eyepiece adaptors. If I'm right, one is for two inch eyepieces which you don't have (yet :) and the other is for 1.25 inch eyepieces, which you do. That's the one on the left in the photo. That should fit onto or into the end of the focuser tube (the bit close to the finder bracket that has a couple of wheels to move it in and out). Once you've got that connected up you can remove the blanking cap to put the eyepieces in.

Have you connected up the handset and power pack?

James

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JamesF

JamesF

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Ok, thanks, :) eye piece is now in position, batterys are in the pack and the synscan is attached, I have just plugged in the battery pack.

Well that sounds promising. Looking at the bits in the photo I don't think there's anything else left to add, other than the cap for the main telescope tube for when you're not using it.

The first thing I'd probably do at this point is to make sure I could actually see something through the eyepiece, but as there's not much of a Moon tonight that may be easiest if you wait for tomorrow and try to focus on a distant building or something like that. Setting up is often best done in the daytime.

Once you can find something in the eyepiece say a kilometre or more away then if you look through the finder scope you need to twiddle the adjustment screws to get whatever is in the centre of the eyepiece to be at the centre of the finder cross-hairs too. In the UK it's common to use a telegraph pole or television aerial for the alignment because they're pretty much everywhere, but anything similar would work.

My recollection of the manual for the handset is that it's actually not too bad. The only awkward bit I recall is entering your latitude and longitude and getting them in the correct order and format. If you're not sure of those you can usually get them by finding your location on Google Earth or something similar. If it's a clear night tonight and you know some of the stars then you could probably take the scope out and align it without needing to worry about the finder. It can be a bit confusing at first, but you'll get there.

If you need more help then I'd start a new post in the getting started equipment section here. More people may well read that and as I don't have a mount like yours I'm working from intuition rather than knowledge :)

Good luck with it, and don't worry if you feel utterly confused at first. I'm sure many of us were the same at some point and it's rare that no-one here can help.

James

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