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By Bigwings
I need my garage back so am selling my excess mounts.
1. EQ5 motorised on both axis.
No tripod this was mounted ony pier. Tracks well.
£100 Collect only because of weight .
2. An older type Skywatcher AZ goto mount that came with my SkyMax 127. Good condition .
£100 Collect please but might be able to send if you arrange courier.
SOLDto Pitbull ...thanks
3. AZ GTi goto in excellent condition . Still have the box so can send at cost.
The pic shows it with a telescope on it which is not included.
£200
Location just north of Newark on A1
Clear Skies.
Thanks for looking
All Sold.
mods VB please move
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By Greg6498
Hello all!
I have been using my Skywatcher 8” Dobsonian for some time now, and decided I wanted a good refractor with an EQ mount as my next scope. I chose the Skywatcher Evostar Pro 80mm with an LX70 EQ5 mount. This seems to be a great scope to compliment my Dob, but I'm still getting used to the EQ mount! Found some good Youtube videos and am hoping for a clear night soon to really give it a workout! Any advice is appreciated!
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By kman42
I have an EQ5 telescope mount which i use for astrophotography. I have modified it with a motorised RA axis using a bipolar stepper motor - my thread for the build is here .
I want to expand the mount's tracking ability by motorising the DEC axis and using a guide scope/camera. I generally use the mount in fairly remote locations so would like to use a raspberry Pi for portability.
I understand that I'll need to use a Raspberry Pi Camera Module for the guide camera.
The capability I want is:
1. guide the mount along RA and DEC axes using a guide star as feedback
2. track the mount using the RA axis only, and if possible continuously take 20-30 second exposures on the guide camera (this functionality is optional, but would assist in polar alignment of the mount)
I don't want any GOTO capability. I am very new to RPi and need some help:
- do I need to write code for this, or is there existing programming available for what I want to do?
- is it possible to avoid the use of screens (in the field)? My preferred option would be to flick a switch to start and stop the guiding, with another switch for alignment mode (or something simple like this).
- do I need to use any particular stepper motors/drivers for raspberry Pi? I'm using a bipolar stepper motor running quarter steps, with an A4988 stepper driver
- is the RPi 3 Model B+ the unit I should buy?
Thanks
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By Coastliner
Hi All,
If I grab hold of the puck on my AZEQ5 I can make it rock back and forth by a degree or so (DEC axis), there appears to be no play in the RA axis. Does anyone else have this? Can it be adjusted out?
Thanks,
Neil.
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By msacco
Hello, so I bought my first telescope a few days ago, I bought a SkyWatcher 200p on a goto EQ5 mount, my first general impression is that I made a good decision, it was a bit over my budget, but I bought it second hand, and 8" with goto EQ5 is a good start in my opinion so far, as I won't need to replace is really soon.
So I tried observing for 2 nights so far, I tried using it from my garden, and obviously its not amazing, but I live in a relatively small city with a decent light pollution.
So the first night was pretty bad, it was really hard adapting to everything, learn how to use everything, my brother ripped by mistake the crosshair in the finderscope(I fixed it today tho, it was kinda loose before, so its even better now), and it was pretty hard.
Today I read a little about the things that were harder to me, I tried to align my finderscope, and even tho Im unable to do it for some reason, I know where the finderscope leads me, so its a bit easier, I learned how to use my eyepieces better, managed to use the 2x barlow lens, I still couldn't figure how to really do all the aligning correctly such as polar align etc, but hopefully I'll learn that slowly. I also tried adjusting my goto mount, but I couldn't do it because when Im trying to do the star aligning I don't know yet which stars I should use, and trying to figure where each star is in a place that you're not even sure if you can see it because of light pollution is kinda hard, so I gave up on aligning the goto and just used it to move the mount sometimes to follow an object.
The only object that I really saw was mars(I think), I couldn't see it very well tho, I tried using all my eyepieces(25mm, 10mm and 4mm) and my 2x, but it still wasn't really great. Im not expecting to see anything too well obviously, but I did except to see it a bit more zoomed and a bit more detailed than sort of orange lamp light, it makes me wonder what can I do about it, what do I need in order to see mars better? Is it because of the light pollution? Maybe the eyepieces? Something maybe Im doing wrong? Again, Im not expecting to see it like hubble pictures or anything, not even with details, but just see it a bit bigger and a bit more clear, this is a photo for example(took it with my phone and 10mm super eyepiece):
One more thing is about the finderscope, when Im trying to adjust the finderscope, I simply can't adjust it enough to make it accurate, I need to loosen the screws to adjust it, but eventually the screw will just go out and the finderscope will still not be aligned with the scope, what can I do about it?
I have a lot more to learn and experience, so sorry if I ask really stupid questions etc, thanks a lot for the help!
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