Hello from a complete newbie - Struggling already!

[Wippers]

Hi Guys - Just thought I'd say a quick hello as I've just invested in a new scope and mount having been thinking of doing so for many years. After spending many hours on various forums and talking to some of the well know retail guys, I decided to push the budget our and get an Altair Wave 102mm triplet F7 Refractor along with a HEQ5 mount. Initially I would just like to view the night sky and learn what's out there as it's something that has always fascinated and interested me. When I have learned enough and feel confident enough I plan on trying some astro photography as I'm already a reasonably competent wildlife photographer.

I've already had a quick play looking at the Moon and Jupiter with reasonable success but now I've come to set the mount up I'm really struggling to say the least, verging on worrying if I will ever get this sorted. I've been trying to set up the reticule to make sure when it's aligned with Polaris it is central which I assume is needed for accuracy when taking long exposures. This has got me stumped already! When I look through the polarscope should everything be upside down (not the engraved star positions etc) but the view through? I've put a small dot on a piece of paper on the other side of the room and tried to use that as a focus point but the engraving is not level when the DEC mounting plate is? I assumed when the DEC is flat and level then looking through the polarscope would also be level? I thought this would be the easy bit but I'm worrying that maybe I'm not capable of doing this. Any help would be much appreciated, and if there's anyone in or around Congleton, Cheshire, UK who would be will to offer a hand I'd more than grateful.

 

Thanks for reading

Gareth

[swag72]

Hi Gareth and welcome to SGL - My geography is terrible, but here's a link  to astro clubs in Cheshire - Perhaps that would be a way to start.... there you will get to meet lots of helpful and like minded folks (much like SGL but things can be easier in person)

Look forward to seeing you around

[vlaiv]

Best way to think about it - in astronomy there is no up/down, left/right. It is all relative - as Einstein once said

So - some telescopes give left/right picture reversed, some designs reverse up/down and some optical trains give both left/right and up/down reversed. This should not concern you. Think of the mirror - it flips left and right, still we all readily use it frequently and get accustomed to it.

As for positions on EQ mount - they too are relative to something. For example polar scope should be aligned to the axis that EQ mount rotates around - RA axis (come to think of it it rotates around dec axes as well, but never mind now). Simple way to do it - point your polar scope at fixed point (take one that is further away - light on remote tower or something like that), Place it in dead center of reticle (cross intersection). Rotate mount around RA axis half a circle (180 degrees) - to make up switch to down :D. If point moves away from crosshair center - you have to align polarscope. To do that - use screws that adjust polarscope centering and place light point halfway between where it is after rotating and crosshairs center. Think of it as pair of calipers / compass (don't know if it is the right name for device used to draw circles). One hand is original direction of light point, other hand is direction of point of light after 180 degrees rotation - If axes are aligned there should be no rotation. Direction halfway between compass hands does not move when rotated - this is where light point should be.

As for crosshairs orientation - same thing, it has to be relative to something - when you come to polar alignment - you will have to determine at which RA position crosshairs is pointing up, and that will be your baseline - this can change because you are free to disengage clutch and rotate telescope independently of mount itself.

It might be intimidating at the start but soon enough it will become second nature to you. If still struggling, find some online tutorials with pictures and follow the procedure.

[bingevader]

Hello, welcome to SGL.

[laudropb]

Hello and a warm welcome to the SGL.

[Stephen Green]

Hi a warm welcome to the SGL

 Stephen

[Dave Lloyd]

Hi Gareth, welcome.

[Dave In Vermont]

Greetings and welcome oboard SGL, Gareth! It's nice to see you here. We love helping people find answers to questions in the vast realm that is astronomy. As this is the 'Welcome' forum here, I'm sure we can help you with your new & wonderful telescope in a better forum for such - I'd suggest this:

https://stargazerslounge.com/forum/186-getting-started-equipment-help-and-advice/

Fear not - I'm sure we can help you get your mount purring like a kitten!

Clear and dark skies -

Dave

[RSM]

Hi Gareth, first welcome to the Forum. There are loads of members on this forum who can give you lots of great advice. Also, by reading around there are lots of tips and tricks on what to do. I joined just over 5 months ago and it really helped my understanding. I found trawling You Tube for videos on how to set up the scope was the best thing. I also had several goes at setting up during the daytime when observing or imaging time is not at a premium. It is a little frustrating at times, but please stick with it as you will get the hang of it, sometimes by trial and error!

The first thing I did was to check that the reticule in my polar scope was centred by following the instructions on the astro-baby.com website. There is a whole section on aligning the HEQ5 for "idiots" (!) which I found very helpful (no comment).

I found a handful of videos on You Tube really helped me. There were a couple by "astronomyshed" (mount alignment and complete mount set up) and a video called "EQ5 setup and polar alignment" by Adrian Clark.

I also bought an App for my iPhone called "Polar Align" which helps you find the position of Polaris for your location at the time you are aligning. I use this everytime and it really helps getting the alignment pretty spot on. It also has a Universal Time clock accurate to the second which is very useful if you are setting up a synscan system and want the right time.

I comes down to practice in my experience, but after practicing set up during the day and then doing the alignment part several times, it does (honestly) get a lot easier. Once you've cracked it and you slew the scope to where your target should be and you find what you are looking for, the feeling is great.

Of course, once you've cracked the alignment, then it's on to the fun and games of creating a great image using stacking and processing to get every possible bit of data out of your individual exposures. Best advice here I can give is to buy "Making Every Photon Count" by Steve Richards. That will really set you on your way of what you need (and what you don't need) and how to get the best from your imaging time.

Above all, good luck and enjoy. Once you start getting your first images, you'll be amazed at what there is to find in the night sky.

Cheers,

Richard

[Ruud]

Hi Gareth,

The image appearing upside down in your polar alignment scope is normal. Even your main telescope will give you upside down images if you remove the diagonal. You chose a nice telescope, by the way.

Thank you for joining the SGL!

[Wippers]

Wow, thanks guys for all the brilliant input already. Have to say earlier today after really struggling I was seriously considering whether I am ever going to get up and running. The toys were on the verge of being thrown from the pram, which is not like me as I'm a very patient person usually as you have to be with wildlife photography. Perhaps it's because I'm well out of my comfort zone. I've found my local astronomy club who meet next Tuesday so will pop along and see how I get on. I'll have a look at the videos and other posts and try again during the day at the weekend and report back. I'm sure once I've got the hang of it I'll love the hobby as I love the photography side and photoshop stuff. 

One thing I'm not sure about, is whether the tripod base needs to be spirit levelled before setting it up? 

[vlaiv]

7 minutes ago, Wippers said:

One thing I'm not sure about, is whether the tripod base needs to be spirit levelled before setting it up? 

In general it does not need to be perfectly level provided you have good polar alignment - it is polar alignment that counts. But of course in order to properly polar align, you will want your tripod to be as level as possible - so use spirit bubble level if doing anything serious - like imaging - for quick setups where you want to take a quick look it is not important.

[RSM]

HI again, I level mine up fairly accurately. If you are imaging, in my experience the more accurate you can be in the set up, the better your success rate at finding what you want to look at and the better your tracking of the subject will be.

The learning curve is dramatic and being a keen photographer already, you'll know a lot of tricks. I took a few shots of the moon and some constellations with a simple tripod for my Canon EOS500D before I got my scope. This enabled me to try out various stacking techniques which you'll need to get the best out of your images. After trying out a couple of free stacking programs (autostakkert and registax) and using the free test for PS, i settled on a program called PixInsight (PI) which allows me to stack and process in one program. It's not cheap, but you can sign up for a 45 day free trial of the full software with no obligation to purchase. Again, there are loads of you tube tutorials which will help (I found a couple by a chap called Richard Bloch which taught me the basics of stacking and processing but there are loads and loads to find for specific techniques you want to learn). As you already have PS, using the free stacking software and then processing with PS will probably be the best and cheapest way for you to proceed but I'd encourage you to look at the free trial of PI too.

As an example of the learning curve, I've attached a couple of images below - hopefully you can work out which was my first and latest image :-)

Cheers,

[Wippers]

Cheers RSM. Based on that I've ordered a small spirit level from EBay so that should help. I forget how years ago I had to learn how DSLRs worked and lived it as the passion was there. I'll plug away at this and sure I'll get there eventually. I'll move onto some of the software options when I've got this lump of metal up and running! ?

Some lovely images there too.??

[Wippers]

Sorry for all the questions guys but I'm definitely in a whole new world of learning here! One other problem I had when just viewing was finding subjects in the sky. I'd aim the scope roughy in the right direction but it then took me ages to find it in the view finder. Any suggestions?

[JamesM]

Hi and welcome to the forum

Clear skies

[hjw]

Hi Wippers,

just to give you an idea how I started my first setup. First I decided where I want to put my scope to maximise the view of the sky. During the day I marked the geographic (not magnetic) north-south direction and aligned the mount. Mark the positions of the legs. At night you can use the combination of a 2-star alignment and a polar alignment to achieve a good polar alignment. Once this is done make the marking of the leg positions more permanent. I actually put bricks in the lawn and glued 1" washers on the bricks where the legs were. The rubber nobs now stand in the hole of the washers. When I start to set up my equipment I am within 2 arcmin from polar alignment without touching anything. In other words, you have to get it right once and then it becomes easy. For astrophotography you want to be below 1' deviation from polar alignment when you start. By the way, I find it easiest to do the polar alignment during dusk because the bright alignment stars are the only ones visible.

It can be daunting at the beginning but with some practice it takes less than 10 minutes later.

And finally, nice setup for a beginner

HJ  

[hippie]

Welcome to SGL Gareth .

[PeterCPC]

Hello and welcome.

Peter

[todd8137]

Hi and welcome from me 

pat

[seo]

Hi Gareth and welcome aboard.

[glowjet]

Hi Gareth and welcome to SGL, looks like some helpful assistance is already being provided, to help with your problem. If you feel you need advise, on anything else in the future, then just post additional inquiries into the appropriate sub section, such as Getting Started General Help and Advice. These and most of the other sub sections of the forum, have a much bigger following than here in the Welcome section, you should find the imaging sections especially helpful when you have an inkling to go over to the dark side, Astrophotography, as it is affectionately called, enjoy the forum  

[Pete Presland]

Hi welcome to SGL from Pete in Bedfordshire :-)

[michigander]

Welcome to SGL, Gareth1

 

Dana

[Charon]

Welcome to the forum Gareth.