My new dirty telescope and I

[MrCat]

Happy Kat - Sure thing, I'll try and get something today, it's wet miserable, and not a day to be a gardener, or a star gazer for that matter! :|

[happy-kat]

Re-looked at the video and you have:

Newtonian Reflector

Aperture: 76mm

Focal Ratio: f/9.2

Focal length: 700mm

Highest Practical Power (Potential): x152

Tube Dimensions: 670mm x 120mm

Total Weight: 3.8kg

Mount Design: Yoke Altazimuth alluminium tripod

This is basically your telescope in this video.

I can now see that the bar on the side of the tripod to the telescope will help you adjust the alttidute the telescope is pointing to and then holds it in place once I assume it is tightened. I think you need to massage this back into life as right now I am thinking you will not be able to point it to the Moon. If you are into DIY it is fairly easy to make a new dobsonisan mount for it if the tripod is foobar. There are quite a few posts on this.

A great find and you got eyepeices with it so it is a deffinate goer.

[MrCat]

Ohh haha, I was being blind...the power of the torch, I can now see something to tighten, a bolt that I previously thought was just round and not bolt shaped....now where's my socket set!...

Aghhh no, ok here's a pic: I hope the link works

https://www.dropbox.com/sc/t14jsxadgyh83zi/AADvcstTki0ZnKYjBf51ipKra

So there's the offending bolt I thought was just a round 'captive' thing as/and it's not accessible from the top side of the telescope mount. And guess what, sockets are too wide to fit haha, who'd have thought to put a bolt in such a ridiculous place? I'm going to have to get creative now to tighten this thing. Maybe the tripod comes with a special tool, either that it's completely flawed in design. Lucky I'm a creative guy so I won't let this stump me just yet I've got a few ideas up my sleeve but any of your are welcome! I think if I can tighten this it will make things a lot better.

The silver and obvious tighten/loosten nob on the side you can maybe see here or in the earlier vid seems to do nothing! tight or loose.

Curious.

 

[MrCat]

Ahhh thanks Happy Kat, yea I think that's the vid I put in my welcome post haha, it was all I could find too. Yes I'm still quite excited and still thinking it's a good find Fingers crossed my finder scope may arrive in the post today, but the weather is so rubbish right now and forecast to be the same for the week, can't even see the islands!

[MrCat]

And for the love of it a quick phone vid

- check out the vid description. I think I may try and glue something to the top of the offending bolt that I can then use to tighten it, or jam something down the side of it and try and get some twisting action going on!

[happy-kat]

That is a nice simple design.

Undo/loosen the holding screw with the star head.

The captive sleeve on the bar that is fixed to the telescope by the tripod head looks like it needs to be able to rotate.

As you then lift the front of the telescope up the captive sleeve rotates and the bar slides along it.

Once positioned tighten the star headed screw (looks like a tap) by hand.

Probably a bit of corrosion to ease to make it work smoothly.

[MrCat]

Ahh Happy Kat, I think we're talking crossed-purposes here perhaps? I was referring to the silver star head below that that appears to fix the mount to the tripod. That's where the problem lays just now.

[Lonestar70]

It looks to me like the inner bearing has collapsed, or has worn away, inside the top of the mount.

If you unscrew the silver star bolt far enough you should be able to lift the yolk out of the tripod, but you may find the bearing has cold welded it'self to the spindle.

The silver star bolt should just be a locking screw to prevent rotation, however the inner end may sit in a recess in the yolk spindle to prevent it falling out.

It can possibly be fixed with a new bush/bearing.

Best regards.

Sandy.

[MrCat]

Thanks Sandy, yes it doesn't lift from the tripod even when you unscrew the star bolt all the way, but you'd think it should. I didn't want to force it and it's covered in grease inside by the looks, like it's not really meant to come apart unless you're up to something serious

And thanks James, viewer arrived today as foretold Just have to wait a week or so now for a clear day...

[jambouk]

[MrCat]

Hey folks, just thought I'd let you know I that suddenly the moon doesn't feel that far away! It came out tonight at long last and I was able to get out just now and try the scope for the first time. It was totally amazing.

The best thing was I tried all my eyepiece combinations and was able to get some great views using the 8mm and the barlow 2x together.

It was completely awesome, and thanks to you all for helping me out

[Dave In Vermont]

Now you know what all this fuss is, eh? Good! There is so very much more to discover out there. And on this note, perhaps it's time to warrant you finding out how to find the myriad goodies above one's head: STELLARIUM <trumpets blowing noise>!

Stellarium is a very realistic planetarium-program which, set to your time and location, will show you what's up there and how to get to these things. So I'll give you the cut & paste I have and you can follow the links at your leisure. Following that I'll toss in a current screenshot of how I have my edition set-up currently. Away we go:

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 Stellarium is what is called a planetarium program. You start by setting it to your location, and it will show you a very realistic representation of the night sky - complete with any and all objects up there you choose to include. The instructions are quite large. Setting it up can take anywhere from 10 minutes to 10 days. It's up to you. Similar programs can run you £200. But Stellarium is totally free. And away we go:

 

http://www.stellarium.org/
 
As for instructions, the most current one's are posted in Wiki due to their being new features & functions being created almost daily. There is also a Pdf. that's almost up-to-date. Here's the Wiki-Link:
 
http://www.stellarium.org/wiki/index.php/Stellarium_User_Guide
 
And the Pdf. is here:
 
http://barry.sarcasmogerdes.com/stellarium/stellarium_user_guide-new.pdf
 
This should help you to find just about everything under the Sun.

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Have fun!

Dave

[mcolbert]

unless of course you have an older OSX version which is not supported.      

It seems like I'm going to get new macs sooner rather than later.

michael

[Ruud]

Beautiful screenshot, Dave. Stellarium gets prettier with every new release.

I just downloaded the last catalogue of stars. It has 55 million faint stars, I think, and took two hours to download.

Mr Cat, you don't really have to download all the extra stars, but you probably will, eventually. The initial download is quite manageable.

In Stellarium the stars twinkle and beauty of the program invites you to populate it with more stars so that you can zoom deep into the universe as you could if you had a really big telescope.

To get more stars, press F₂  to open the configuration window and look for "star catalogue update"at the bottom of the Tools tab.

To open the View window, press F₄. There you'll find the DSO tab. The catalogues M and C contain the most popular Deep Sky Objects. These are the  M(essier) and C(aldwell) catalogues. They  contain the brightest nebulae, star clusters and galaxies. With your telescope, and with some patience and practice, you will find many of them. If you think you see too many or too few DSOs on the map, try the Labels and Hints sliders.

Dave has some really big scopes, so he probably has more DSO catalogues opened, hence the pretty, colourful clutter in his screenshot.

Use the link Dave provides. Stellarium is open source. It is completely free. Also have look at the thread What can I Expect to See to get an idea of what things look like in a telescope.

Happy observing!

[Alan64]

MrCat,

Per your video, I see that your mount isn't up to snuff at the moment.  I have a mount that's very similar, and for this 60mm refractor...

Although I received the telescope as brand-new old-stock, the mount-head was not in the best condition.  Here's a close-up of the mount-head. with successive images illustrating what I did to improve it.  Hopefully you might get an idea of what may need to be done to get yours in working order...

First, I disassembled the head and permanently immobilised the utterly useless fine-adjustment mechanism by inserting a brass shim into the lowermost portion's opening, then hammered the upper portion(circled) into the shimmed opening...

Afterwards, I reinstalled the fine-adjustment mechanism and tightened it as far as it would go, never to be utilised again.  It is and was of an extremely poor design...

The mount-head's two components are now as though they are one.  I then turned to the optical tube's yoke, or fork, with its shaft, which is inserted into the mount-head's opening.  I shimmed the full length of the yoke's shaft with phosphor-bronze sheet, and to elimnate any and all slop.  Lithium-based grease was used throughout...

I added a large flat washer for a bearing between the yoke and the mount-head, and before combining the two...

The yoke was secured to the mount-head from the bottom by a simple bolt and washers, but I thought it to be inadequate, so I created a spring-loaded bolt out of parts acquired locally...

The spring-loaded bolt, and bronze shim, allows for smooth, slop-free rotation in the azimuth, without binding nor with the bolt to loosen in future.

Where the optical tube joins within the yoke, I replaced the metal washers with those of nylon, and added even more for a snug fit, filling the gaps between the optical tube and the yoke's arms, and lubricated with Superlube, a Teflon or PTFE-based lubricant...

It's now the very best it may be, and for decades to come...if not a century or more.

I sincerely hope that this has been of some help.

Cheers,

Alan

[MrCat]

Whilst you don't need a bracket as seen from the photo above, you can get them

This will hold you smartphone

http://www.telescopehouse.com/acatalog/Revelation-Smartphone-holder-with-tripod-threaded-bush-1.html

and it plugs into either of these, which then clamps to the scope - most likely the eyepiece or eyepiece holder.

http://www.telescopehouse.com/acatalog/Revelation-P195-A-Universal-Digiscoping-Adaptor-28mm-45mm.html

http://www.telescopehouse.com/acatalog/Revelation-P200-A-Universal-Digiscoping-Adapter-43mm-65mm.html

I've not used a bracket like this myself, hence why I'm not sure exactly how it works, but it's good to know it exists ;-)

Ahhh yes I downloaded Stellarium a little while back and have set it up, but I found virtually all the planets are gathered round the sun at the moment, and have since been informed you need to stay up very late or get up very early in order to see them this time of year from my location. I'm not sure on what other stuff will be good to look at but I'll give it some research and give it a go the next clear night.

Now I'm interested in getting the smartphone/camera attachments mentioned earlier in the thread, anyone any experience with these?

Cheers