More advice needed!

[Beatlejohn]

Hey guys... so ive only had my skywatcher 6" dob for a couple of weeks and im having fun so far. Finding it a little time consuming to hunt down things i want to look for manually and its a little overwhelming and frustrating really.

I need advice from u guys here... im thinking of upgrading already to a skywatcher GOTO dob... the flex tube collapsible ones. I like the idea of being able to find things a lot faster and using more time to actually enjoy looking at objects instead of just trying to find them. I almost got one of those to begin with but thought the idea of hunting things down sounded fun... and it kind of is and isnt..I also dont want to seem like im just giving up too easy in trying to locate things but i already feel like that i would just rather spend more time looking instead of finding.

Also if i was to upgrade what size should i upgrade to? would 8" be enough? I really like the dobs... suits me that u just plonk it on the ground and look but are there other scopes i should be looking at?
I will probably end up going out of town eventually for some dark viewing but for the most part its going to be back yard for me with a little light pollution but i still seem to get some pretty good views.

So thoughts?

[Troy.k]

Hi john

I've also had trouble finding objects, I have a few apps but find it difficult to star hop and when I think I have found what I'm looking for I'm never positive if I'm looking at the right object, planets are no worries but I want to see more.

So I have ordered a nexus II from Astro devices in a kit with 2 encoders, it links up to a tablet so once aligned you can see a cross on your star map on your iPad and can be used to search for objects. You could also transfer it to another scope if you upgrade which is what I will be doing.
Website is astrodevices.com give Serge a call or email he has been very quick to reply and has even spent time on the phone answering my stupid newbie question, hopefully will be receiving it late this week or start of next week.

[thegableguy]

Did you get a red dot finder yet?

[Beatlejohn]

No chris.... i thought id just get a new telescope instead :lol:

[Atmos]

Going to an 8" GoTo dob is a good choice. There is a 50% light grasp increase between the 8" & 10" but it is also a fair bit more expensive and a bit more combersome to move around.

[thegableguy]

Well man, you gotta do what you gotta do... but all I can say is that I hated my guidescope, replaced it almost immediately with an RDF, and then never had any major problem finding anything again.

Having said that, I'd totally recommend a bigger aperture! 8" is good - targets will appear nearly twice as bright as your 6". Of if you're going all out, a 10" is closer to triple the light gathering, with an extra bit of magnification too.

I still say you need a red dot finder. Regardless of your scope size and whether it's automated or not, get one and make your life vastly easier. It really is impossible to overstate how much easier they are to use than a guidescope.

[Stonius]

There's a trick to using (straight through) finderscopes that gives them the same advantages of a red dot finder.


Don't squint and close one eye - KEEP BOTH EYES OPEN!
Look at the target spot in the sky where you are wanting to point the telescope
Now move your head such that in one eye you are keeping an eye on the target area, while the other eye looks through the finderscope (you will typically view from a more relaxed distance for this - no eyeballs pressed right against the finderscope! Yes, you probably won't get the full field of view, but meh, it doesn't matter for this method.)
Now move the telescope as if you're trying to place the crosshair in the finder over the target area you're looking at with your other eye. Once you get close, you'll see the object pop into view in the finder too
Fine tune to get it central to the crosshairs and assuming your scope was aligned properly in the first place, the object should be in the eyepiece


Works on mine, anyway. I do have both a finder and a RDF, but I always like to have a backup. Plus the Mag boost of a finder can be good for finding objects that are not visible to the naked eye.

Cheers

Markus

[Beatlejohn]

Thanks everyone for the advice great bunch of people on here!
I do kind of like the idea of more aperture already.... maybe i could go for 10"... seems as im looking at a collapsible tube it wouldnt be that much of a hassle to move around and i already have my 6" on a trolley that i just push it out into my yard. I shouldve just bought this one of these to begin with lol.

[noeyedeer]

before you spend more money, try this technique I use for objects I can't find. use an app that gives alt Az coordinates of your object, I use mobile observatory or stellarium, then I use another app on my phone called smart tools and it has an angle reader, I just move the scopes height to the altitude of the object and pretty much pan to its azimuth and its usually in my finderscope pretty easily.
others have some thing from bunnings, I forget what they're called, but certainly cheaper then a new scope or encoders ...



Matt

[Beatlejohn]

Thanks for the advice everyone... i decided to pull the trigger on a 10" collapsible goto from andrews today... thats my spending for a while!
Now ive got a 6" dob for sale i guess :lol:

[silv]

:lol: :thumbsup:

but don't think that's as good as it gets.
Next year, you can upgrade to 16" binos!

[gaseous]

I bought a $20 green laser off ebay and just shine it through the eye end of my straight through finder - points a nice green beam towards the vicinity of the target and you can then just slew the scope until the laser beam is pretty much on the target. Quick look through the finder to make sure it's centred, and bob's your uncle.

[Beatlejohn]

Yeah maybe i gave up too easy on trying to find stuff myself and spent money on the new scope that i probably really didnt need to but having said that i am looking forward to it and having more bigger aperture will be awesome... and hopefully this is the only scope i will need for a long time and wont need to buy too much else for quite a while.
And hopefully I'll be able to sell my 6" when i get the new one :thumbsup:

[glend]

Technically lasers are illegal in some states and pointing one into the sky anywhere near aircraft or airport approach paths can get you a visit from the police. Never take one to a Star Party or anywhere near imagers.

[gaseous]

Yeah, I did a bit of research beforehand - seems like to have to be a member of an officially recognized astronomical club to own one, and it needs to be less than 1mw (in Queensland at least). It was advertised as 1mw but the actual device says <5mw on the side of it. I guess pointing it at that police chopper the other night probably wasn't a good move...

[Mosc_007]

Gotta agree with this. I always use a Straight thru finder and its a lot easier with two eyes like you suggest.

[AEAJR]

Best of luck with your new telescope.

I have two scopes, an 80 mm Goto and an 8" PushTo (Orion XT8i Intelliscope)

I LOVE the computer assist when I want to use it and I LOVE that I can leave the computer turned off and use the scope manually when I want to do that.

So, enjoy your new scope. You are going to spend a lot more time finding and a lot less time hunting.

You might find this site helpful.

www.tonightssky.com

I use this to prepare my target lists, then I work them with the computer.

[Beatlejohn]

Thanks... the new scope arrived yesterday and got to give it a run last night. Still have to learn how to align it properly it but i like it so far... and the actual scope is much better and so much brighter... the moon was SO bright and saturn looked much brighter and crisper. Cant wait to hunt out some other targets.

[gaseous]

So Beatlejohn, what's the verdict on the 10" dob with a Baader Zoom???

[Beatlejohn]

Its amazing :thumbsup:
So much easier to see stuff with the 10" and that baader just saves so much fussing around changing eye pieces and the Goto mount has just made things A LOT easier i love it and wish i had just bought this scope to begin with.
I have just ordered a R2 camera kit to give some video astronomy a go... cant wait to get that and test it also.

[gaseous]

Glad the visual stuff is working out! Good luck with the photography - dobs aren't renowned for being astrophotography-friendly from all I've read - certainly my pathetic dabblings were nothing to get excited about.

[Beatlejohn]

Thanks mate... not getting a camera for photography... just more visual stuff.

[gaseous]

Ahh, sorry, I misread your post. Keen to hear how that turns out too!

[AEAJR]

I am also looking at the Reveloution Imager R2 kit to get into video astronomy or as some call it Electronically Assisted Astronomy, EAA.

I would really enjoy reading of your impressions of the kit.

[AEAJR]

I also ordered a Revolution Imager R2 kit. I would be interested to read your impressions. I don't have mine yet. Hope to have it this week.

[ChrisV]

Maybe IIS needs a separate section for live camera viewing ! There's a sticky above but we don't want to crowd that out.
If cloudynights and stargazerslounge can do it ..

[Beatlejohn]

I received my kit yesterday... The clouds have arrived here so i havent had a chance to test it out yet... but im impressed with the kit itself... the cables are short but ive bought extension cables as suggested. A great kit for getting into video astronomy as everything is included. Cant wait for a clear night!

[AEAJR]

First attempt with the Reveloution Imager R2 kit.
http://www.revolutionimager.com/

FWIW, I powered up my R2 kit yesterday and, what do you know, it worked. :D

During the day I put it into my Meade ETX 80 and was able to focus on my neighbor's house, about 100 feet and some distant trees, about 1000 feet. Did not use the cut filter or the focal reducer.

Played with the menus on the camera via the remote. Not too hard to understand. Basically there are 3 things that we will play with and leave the rest alone.

So, I am all pumped up to get this on a star. But noooo, as night falls there are clouds all across my sky. I should have expected this. I bought new stuff, of course there are clouds. ;( Went to bed around midnight.

2:30 am nature calls. So I answer the call then head for the door. Ohhhh, clear sky with a rim of clouds low along the horizon to the South and East but they seem to be moving in parallel to my location, not toward or away. Great!

3:00 am - I have all my stuff set-up and the Goto aligned and tested. That is when I realized that I have not planned for where I am going to put stuff. I have a battery, a monitor and wires to deal with. I have a remote hanging down and .... stuff. My plan was to rest this all on the eyepiece tray but that is not going to work. IT is not flat enough and not large enough and I am wasting time fumbling with all this stuff.

I get Capella lined up in the eyepiece. Pull the eyepiece and put the camera in. I almost have Capella in focus but I guess it is not exactly centered because as the big ball becomes a smaller ball moving toward a pinpoint star it goes out of view. I hit the buttons on the hand control and the movement on the screen is not in the direction I expect. I can't find Capella.


Note to self, during the day, test and mark the camera for the correct orientation so the scope and the image are moving in the same direction.
Note to self, rig up some kind of shelf or hanger system on the tripod to hold the monitor, the battery and figure out some cord control.

So I look up and I discover that those parallel clouds have TURNED, have looped back toward me from the SE. and now the sky is being swallowed up by clouds. :(

3:30 am I am back in the house, frustrated. But, all success comes from failure so I have learned that I have some daytime work to do.

Wish me clear skies!

[Atmos]

I think we've all had experienced like that Ed :lol:
It is mostly through out failures that we learn what NOT to do and that can be infinitely more important in the long run than just getting it right.

Glad to hear that it is largely working without issues :)

[ausastronomer]

I have straight through finders and red dots on my 10" and 14" SDM's and a Telrad and RACI finder on my 18" Obsession. What you suggest may be helpful to some people but the single thing I find most important to using a straight through finder happily and comfortably is to bend low and get right underneath it and then look up with your head straight, as opposed to using it with your head tilted at a funny angle.

I much prefer straight through finders to RACI's as they are much easier to aim to the correct part of the sky. If I could only have 1 finder device it would be a Telrad as I find this is the easiest to use to do the initial alignment of the Argo Navis.

Cheers
John B

[AEAJR]

I realized that I needed a place for the monitor and other stuff but wanted to avoid having to carry a table so I am making a tray that will fit onto the tripod. It is not finished yet but it is coming along nicely.

It is about 12" from the center of the arc to the center of the brace in the middle of the tripod. The cutouts fit around the tripod legs. Just need to work out a lip so things don't roll off.

[gaseous]

Have you chaps that invested in the Revolution Imager got any further reviews? Keen to hear your thoughts.

[AEAJR]

9/4/16 - 9-10:30 pm * ETX 80 and Reveloution Imager R2.

This is not really much of a report. The skies were not very clear. Seemed like a thin cloud layer overhead and thicker clouds along the horizon. Things were very dull and obscured. * But I did play with the new video system.

From my failed attempt the other day I realized that I needed to work on space management and come up with places to put things. So first thing I did was make a shelf that hooks onto the tripod. This gives me a little working space. This worked extremely well. If you have a scope on a stable tripod you might want to make one of these. Mine is made of 5/16" ply wood with a 1X2 stiffener across teh bottom that sits against the legs of the tripod. Very stable.

Then I just blindly pointed the scope into Cassiopeia with no tracking just to play with the camera and settings. I did put on the IR filter but not the focal reducer. I was able to get it into focus and just watched stars go through the field of view as I played with the settings. So, it works!

As I said, the sky was lousy, so this was just a "getting used to the equipment" time. One thing I can see is that when I am working with this video system I will want to plan my observations so that I am focused on a particular part of the sky. With all these wires I would not want the scope swinging through vast arcs as I hunted at random/

So far all I can report is that it works. Can't yet say whether this will be a valued addition to my astronomy equipment, but it looks promising. And the shelf works great!

[AEAJR]

9-11-16 - Playing with the Revolution Imager R2

I got the kit about 10 days ago and it seems it has been almost all clouds.* The club has had to cancel three observation/outreach events.

I saw a gap in the clouds so I rushed out with the ETX 80 and the R2 kit to see if I can get some sky time with it.

I barely had visibility to Arcturus and Altair which the scope chose for alignment.** They were in and out of clouds.

Once I had the GoTo aligned I went to the moon then swapped out the eyepiece for the R2 camera. I could not get it to focus then I tried reducing the exposure time as the moon is very bright. When I got it down to 1/250 of a second the focus started to come in and it looked best at 1/500th.

Clearly I need to clean up the wires as I have too much wire. For now I will strap them up with Velcro straps but I may buy shorter cables later.

Clouds kept coming through and covering the moon, the stars, everything, so I put it all away. Still learning.

The kit comes with an IR Cut filter and a focual reducer both of which attaché like regular filters.

He included a moon filter but I don't see any reason to use it. I think it is better to just shorten the exposure time. But time will tell.

BTW I also tried it with a 2X barlow to get more mag. I was looking at the moon and thinking, how do I increase magnification, as I would like more mag. Then it occurred to me, use a barlow.

2X barlow worked fine. I also have a 3X barlow that I did not try.

The mag I was getting seemed to be similar to an 8mm eyepiece which, on the ETX 80, is about 50 power.

I have not tried the focal reducer. On the moon I would have no reason.

I spent the evening dodging clouds. I took a turn on Mars but the clouds put a quick end to that.

Hope for clear skies tonight.

[gaseous]

glad the shelf is holding up its end of the bargain!

[AEAJR]

Posted by aeajr on 06 October 2016 - 12:00 AM in General Observing and Astronomy
I don't recall if it was in this thread, but someone asked me to test the Revolution Imager R2 in my XT8i to see if it would work.

Used without the focal reducer it worked fine. Focus was around the real 1/3 as I recall. I did an image impression comparison to my eyepieces. I would estimate the image on the screen would be comparable to a 5 mm eyepiece of narrow AFOV. Mybe comparable to a 40 degree AFOV 5 mm eyepiece.

But when I added the focal reducer I could not get the image in forcus. I think it needed more inward travel. When I brought it all the way out I then pulled the camera slowly out of the focuser to see if more back forcus would help, but it didn't.

The photo below is of the screen. The dark region was not apparent as I looked at the screen so it is somehow an artifact of my camera phone. This was a group of stars in the core of one of the double clusters.

Meade shipped me a replacement for my ETX 80, under warranty. But they shipped me an ETX 90 instead. Turned out it had a bad declination motor drive system, so I boxed it back up and am sending that back. The 90 costs a lot more than the 80. I told them I appreciated the 90 but would prefer an 80 as it is more in line with my goals for the scope.

Seems they have a backlog on the new ETX 80s so I may be waiting a while.

While I had the 90 I did try the RI2 system with it during the day.** Was able to bring in trees about 1/2 mile away both with and without the focal reducer, for anyone who is interested.

I want my ETX 80. Hurry up Meade!


BTW, the image below is taken directly off the video monitor. There was no computer involved and no stacking other than what the RI2 does in the camera. The dark area in the image was not apparent as you looked at the screen. This has something to do with the smart phone I used to take the photo. This was the core of one of the double cluster groups. I call this the man in the cluster. :D

[AEAJR]

So far, from what I see, the view experience is different but exciting. You can also capture the feed to a computer using an adapter, that I have, so that you can do image stacking. I have not ventured into that yet.* With my ETX 80 back with Meade for replacement I have not really been able to make much progress.

[gaseous]

Thanks Ed, does it tend to pick up additional nebulosity/colour?

[AEAJR]

I really haven't been able to work on that. My tracking scope, my ETX 80, is being replaced. Without tracking I am just constantly moving the scope to try and keep the target in view.

The 1200 mm FL of the XT8i provides something comparable to 240X without the focal reducer. So you know how fast things move at that mag.

In the ETX 80 I am working with a 400 mm FL so I will get something around 80X. If the focal reducer works then it will be more like 40X. Now, even without tracking, the target will not be moving so fast.

Add the tracking of GoTo and I can lock onto a target and start to play with it, adjust exposure and averaging in the camera and the like. Then I can get a better idea of what I can do.

Until I get the ETX 80 back I won't be using the RI2.

[AEAJR]

This is the set-up I was going to use on the ETX 80

I have the monitor mounted on the left, the battery on the right or alternately on the OTA. This way the system moves with the scope while is slews and tracks.

I checked with Meade and they said the weight should not be a problem.

The shelf works great. It should be able to hold a laptop when the time comes. But for now it is just a great place to stick stuff like note pad, flash light, small chart, etc. Super easy to make.

Now I am waiting for the replacement ETX 80.

[gaseous]

Nice setup! That screen looks a pretty reasonable size.

[eskimo20]

Ed


I have an earlier model of the Revolution Imager and have been tinkering with it for a few months and getting some good views.


There is a sticky page in this forum –
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=139900


Where we discuss this aspect of modern amateur astronomy and defend against heretics and unbelievers.


Regards
Robert