Improvements

[poider (Peter)]

G'day, I have just been bought an Australian Geographic starview 150EQ reflector Telescope, it has a tube focal length of 750mm.
I amcurious to know what I can do as an amateur astronomer to improve this scope and to get the most from it that I can.
I have purchased a celestron eyepiece kit with a 6mm and 15mm plus a 2x barlow with t piece and also a ring for my Nikon D7000, I plan on one day buying a SkyWatcher Star Adventurer Bundle.
What do you fine people suggest I do.
And I do not want to hearany comments of "throw it away and buy a real telescope"
Thank you all
Peter

[DavidTrap (David)]

Everyone's got to start somewhere!

Learn to collimate the scope.

Learn to drift align so your polar alignment is as accurate as possible.

It looks like the scope does have a motor drive on the RA, so it will track the stars, although the accuracy remains to be seen. Don't expect miracles, but you might get 30 second unguided shots with careful alignment.

I don't know that you can "pimp" this scope much more than that. If you get hooked on astrophotography, then you might be better off selling this scope and upgrading, rather than frustrating yourself.

Best advice, as always, is to join an astronomy club and seek hands on advice.

DT

[poider (Peter)]

thank you David

[barx1963 (Malcolm)]

Peter
I am assuming it is this scope here? http://shop.australiangeographic.com...e-150eq-2.html
Firstly, congratulations on taking the plunge!! I try not to say "throw it away and buy a real telescope" as my philosophy is that if you have bought a scope, the best thing you can do is get out and use it and our job is to help you get the most out of the scope. That largely means helping you to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the scope.
I love dobs for visual use but they have weaknesses that must be understood to get the best out of it.
The strengths of your scope are that it has some nice aperture. Not that many years ago a 6" scope was a big scope. It also will track the sky with it's motorised RA drive in a manner quite suitable for visual use. For imaging, this combo is a bit restricted. I had some success with mounting my DSLR on the top of the scope (piggybacking) and shooting through a 50mm lens rather than through the scope itself. With fairly short exposures, I managed some quite nice widefield results.
With collimation (hopefully the scope came with some basic collimation instructions?) a scope like this at f6 is fairly tolerant of small collimation errors. That doesn't mean yopu should ignore it, just don't obsess about it!!
The main limitation, which you will discover soon for yourself is that newtonians on EQ mounts sometimes put the eyepiece in some interesting positions. Kneeling down in wet grass trying to look through an eyepiece that is pointing straight down at 1am is not always fun.
Apart from that, as already mentioned, try to get the best polar alignment you can and learn to balance the setup, again the scope hopefully has some with instructions how to do that.

Good luck with it and enjoy!!

Malcolm

[croweater (Richard)]

Peter when using the scope visually don't stress too much about polar alignment. Once you've set the alt scale to your lattitude (only needs to be done once) plonk your scope down reasonably level and pointing your polar axis roughly south by eye. Then your ready to go. I haven't done accurate PA for many years as close enough is good enough for visual. Most times you will just need to tweak your declination a bit every few minutes to keep the object in view. No need to waste time spending ages on PA. I prefer my nearly 30yr old EQ mount with drive to a dob as I don't like pushing the scope all the time. It's not that often that you are in uncomfortable position to view. Cheers Richard

[poider (Peter)]

Thank you both firstly Malcolm there are no instructions for collimating, and basic instructions for polar alignment.
I have a basic idea of collocation as in ensuring the secondary mirror is centered then ensuring the main mirror is aligned also. I will check that when the clouds go away,
The scope does not have a motor, but I guess I could buy one, although is fairly susceptible to shakes, so not sure how steady a motor would be.
Crow eater I will have a go at photography, when the ring for my Nikon arrives and the clouds go away

[astro_nutt]

Hi Peter.
Like the others have advised, learn to polar align your scope, collimation, etc which is part and parcel. As for astrophotography, I'm just starting out myself. I also have a Nikon D7000 and I'm more than pleased in the images I've done.

The moon picture was taken through a modified 10"dob at prime focus, which is like having an 8" lens for the camera! A lot to learn but help is here for the asking, and the rewards are great for your efforts!
Cheers!

[sil (Steve)]

Peter, with entry level scopes the weak points to save costs are the tripod and the eyepieces. I would suggest getting better eyepieces, Baader Hyperion eyepieces are very very good quality and you should get crisper images. 8mm eyepiece might be the practical limit for the scope, smaller and image quality worsens fast, depending on seeing conditions.

If you find the scope too wobbly when using, try to hang weight from the tripod to lower the center of gravity and dampen the wobble somewhat.

Down the track you could pick up a second hand GOTO tripod and mount the scope on it (you might need to change the dovetail mount).

Got a skymap book, planisphere and red torch? Learn your way around the sky a bit and go star hopping to find your way around. There are comets out there for you to see and the outer planets too and star hopping is how to get to them. Getting your eye in and learning the scale between what you see in the eyepiece and your skymap is important. Sky hopping you should start with your widest eyepiece (30mm maybe) to make it easier and follow the brighest stars and distinctive formations to get to your target then switch to the smaller eyepiece for a better view.

For moon watching a moon filter will help cut the glare and make it easier on the eyes. At full moon it looks flat but at other phases concentrate on the edge of the shadow on the moon where the craters really pop! You might also enjoy trying to sketch the moon.



The sky isn't going anywhere so just enjoy your time with your scope

[poider (Peter)]

Are celestron eyepieces good quality?

[SA_Dolphin_22 (Tony)]

Evening,
Need to ask Are you a member of an astronomy club?
If not then in absolute agreement with the 'join a club' reccomendation. One I can recommend is the Astronomical Society of South Australia, ASSA, just type ASSA into google and it will come up, yes I am a member and very biased. Get along to viewing nights and just use the scope is rule one. Learn what you can do with it. Above all the best thing is to ask questions as help and advice will always be available.
Absolutely do not let anyone tell you you shouldn't have gotten that or it's no good, simply make the most of what you have available or cn afford and that includes the eyepieces.
A couple of programs to help learn the night sky is stellarium, it is free and gives a really good duplication of the night sky and what is visible.
If going down the astrophotography road have a look at 'backyard Nikon' it is a great aid in in useing the nikkon for astrophotography, just note that some extra cables will be required, but again talk to people who are using it for a better understanding of the system.
Collimation - if you can get to someviewing nights at Stockport then plenty of members will have equip to assist you.
Don't whatever you do get put off by the the big glossies, some of these fine folks have spent thousands and thousands on equipment and yes it shows.
The internet and this great website will have a lot of fantastic information in it so just peruse and like someone said to me when I first started out, everyone will give you lots of great information, simply listen to what is said and use only what you believe you need or can use to better your hobby, obsession , complete and utter way of life (in some cases) ....
Hope to see you up at Stockport later in the year, Tony

[poider (Peter)]

I am not in the ASSA yet, I would like to but I don't want to spend the money and never have a chance to make use of the club, I have very limited time and would barely be able to utilize a membership as it should be utilized.
I do use Stellarium and love it, I have backyard Nikon, but I also have too much light pollution, I have a lot of trouble trying to get good focus even with Backyard nikon, But I will continue to push my knowledge and equipment to it's limit and hopefully that limit will expand and accelerate as the universe around us expands and accelerates.
I will try to get the money together for an ASSA membership one day and hopefully get a look through the big one at Stockport


Peter

[dannat (Daniel)]

Does the scope reach focus with your d-slr ? If not you may need to get a hold of some longer bolts to move the mirror a bit higher up the tube. (if the scope came with an extension tube you are most likely ok to reach focus already)
The celestron eyepiece you bought are most likely average, the 6 will probably require you to get real close to the eye lens & isn't that comfortable. The 15 should be fine, I presume you got a 20 or 25 mm already with the scope.
Couple of things you can do with the legs on a rainy day, detach from the scope & either fill with expanding foam, or buy some dowel, cut to length & put several pieces in to fill up the hollow Al, this will improve stability.
You can also buy some black felt with an adhesive back from spotlight, place some near the main mirror on the tube & some around the focused/secondary.

your mount does not have a polar align scope, the legs in the pic seem fine, maybe keep your eye out for an eq3 / eq5 head, these have the polar scope& ability for dual drives, the head should fit on your existing legs.
If you do get it aligned well outside, mark the spots with line marking paint or something so setup is quicker in future-some people use pavers in the grass with marked feet spots, some vibration reducing rubber feet pads are worthwhile also, but some or make your own
last suggestion, upon up focused, if lube replace with some nice white lithium then tighten al its sçrews so its firm & tight, óften they have a bit of slop

[dannat (Daniel)]

For some reason can't edit, 2nd last line should say focuser.
Forgot, many people prefer a óptical finder, 6x30 or 8x50, keep your eye open for a 2nd hand one on here, easier than bright red dot

[poider (Peter)]

I have an old cheap scope that has an optical finder and now that I have the red dot I love it the red dot seems so much more accurate... to me anyway.
I can take photos of the moon through the scope using the 2X barlow/camera adapter, but I cannot seem to get the planets properly focused.
When I look through the scope I can see a clear crisp white disc surrounded by the rings for saturn and faint, very faint bands on Jupiter, but when i put the camera on I cannot seem to get the same views, I focus right through the focus point, but cannot get it the same especially in the live view mode.
I have a few photos of Saturn through the scope but the are very faint and fuzzy.
Peter

[dannat (Daniel)]

the camera has a diff focus point to your eye -the camera sensor needs to be closer to the optical train than your eye -thats why many get some longer bolts -push the mirror up the tube about 3-5cm than use a 35mm extension tube to reach focus with a eyepiece, removing the ext tube to take a d-slr shot

[poider (Peter)]

If i remove the magnifying part of the barlow i cannot get focus at all, but with the magnifying part I am pretty sure i gone out of focus both sides, but cannot see when it is focused, i am thinking i should get a slower focuser
Peter

[BeanerSA (Paul)]

Originally Posted by poider

I am not in the ASSA yet, I would like to but I don't want to spend the money and never have a chance to make use of the club, I have very limited time and would barely be able to utilize a membership as it should be utilized.

It's well worth the paltry cost. It get's you free access to Stockport, The Heights and Tooperang, and a nice monthly bulletin.

[sil (Steve)]

Originally Posted by poider

I have an old cheap scope that has an optical finder and now that I have the red dot I love it the red dot seems so much more accurate... to me anyway.
I can take photos of the moon through the scope using the 2X barlow/camera adapter, but I cannot seem to get the planets properly focused.
When I look through the scope I can see a clear crisp white disc surrounded by the rings for saturn and faint, very faint bands on Jupiter, but when i put the camera on I cannot seem to get the same views, I focus right through the focus point, but cannot get it the same especially in the live view mode.
I have a few photos of Saturn through the scope but the are very faint and fuzzy.
Peter

Pretty typical with any scope, your eyes adapt and are capable of much sharper views than any camera. This is why people don't just hook up a dslr and press the shutter to photograph a planet. Instead you take hundreds of shots or 2 minutes of video to gather lots of frames then process them together and use wavelets to reveal the details. You don't ever take one photo that gives you the "final" shot.

Hence the market for dedicated astro cameras which capture video with better signal to noise ratios and resolution than dslrs give. Pretty sure i've given detailed steps at least once before here for getting started. Once you try it withe the shots you've already taken you'll be blown away at how much detail is in the shots that you cant yet see by other methods. Astrophotography is 99% about processing and 1% your gear.

[glend (Glen)]

So called "Lucky Imaging" technigues improve planetary imaging substantially. High frame rate video cameras can gather in much more detail than your eye, and when frames are stacked it build dim detail into substantial detail. Video astronomy is gathering many followers who have aging eyes, and we all lose ability to detect detail as our eyes age.

[poider (Peter)]

Ok I have done it, I have joined the ASSA
Looking forward to attending a viewing night ASAP
Peter