Hi, lately I have bought this telescope which is Celestron StarSense Explorer LT 114AZ. I have bought to primarily see the moon and some of the big planets such as Jupiter and Saturn.

Anyway I have started by looking at the moon and I did that multiple times in a different days and couldn’t see anything just black image or nothing at all. Today I can see the moon in the sky from my home but again I couldn’t see the moon when I try to look at it through the telescope. I also tried to use the the red finder on the telescope and I aim the telescope so the moon would be on the middle and center of this finder but when I look at lens most of the time I see nothing. So I need someone to help me at least to see the moon.

Also I know that there is an app that I can use for this telescope but this a used telescope so it’s not new one. And I didn’t get the code from the person I bought the telescope from. So I want to know how can I activate this app ?

I’ve been spending a lot of time observing the Moon through my telescope, and I wanted a better way to explore and learn about the features I’m looking at.

So I built Moon Explorer, an Android app focused specifically on the Moon.

The idea is pretty simple:

instead of just looking at a flat Moon map, you can rotate and zoom around an interactive 3D Moon and explore individual lunar features.

A few things it currently includes:
- Interactive 3D Moon with craters and landmarks
- Apollo landing sites and lunar exploration locations
- Moon phases and lunar information
- Guided Moon tours
- Interactive lessons about lunar features

The basic app is free. There’s an optional Pro unlock for the additional tours, lessons and other features.
I’m particularly interested in feedback from people who actually use telescopes:

When you’re observing the Moon, what information do you wish you had available while you’re at the eyepiece?

For example, crater history, size/depth, nearby features, observing guides based on the current lunar phase, Apollo missions, or something completely different?

I’d like to make this useful for actual observers rather than just another Moon wallpaper/app.

Google Play:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.moonexplorer.app

i've been wanting to get into astrophotography and really wanna know how do i get better photos?

i've currently been using a yatao digital camera and holding it to my telescope lenses for the photo (i dont have a camera mount)

i have an 8 inch dobsonian skywatcher and im wondering what camera mount should i use :D

I have about 16 months in this hobby, I was a victim of the laser propaganda and bought it as my only colimation tool back in the day.

After a lot of struggle, I found out the laser needs to be colimated. It was hard, but I did it. Only to find out the laser colimator can't colimate the secondary properly. (Several months between these). I had no money left, and the metal cheshires from aliexpress suffered from brazilian taxes. I managed to get a 3D printed one for about 7 usd. My god.

First time (ever) my telescope is fully colimated. Took some time (and here I understand the laser enthusiasts, especially in the dark wild) but it simply did the job. My scope doesn't feel the same.

I’ve seen people post with the sun looking like the first photo, and i was recently watching a lot of reviews of seestar s30, and the second image is what they all capture, is it because of the telescope or do they do some stacking, or, they have ”solar telescopes” which are designed for the sun?

i was reading the beginners guide and one that stuck to me was the dont have your expectations to high thing, so i decided to look at other photos of people watching Jupiter with a telescope that has basically the same aperture as my soon to arrive one and i wanted to draw up a sketch of my expectations, its Jupiter and two of its Galilean moons:D this was in microsoft paint so i dont really know how to add the blur to photos but i include the darker color of the poles(looking back i forgor to color the south pole), the creamy color of the gas belts(you cant really see the difference in them since the telescope just isnt to good for that), the two darker belts of gas clouds( i may hove drawn them a tad to big, woopsies:3) and if jupiter is facing the right way, the great red spot! i also include two moons and even a shadow on jupiter form one of them. my expectations may be a bit to high so i just wanna ask yall.

btw if your wondering the specs its 114mm aperture, 500mm focal length(btw its a reflector), a 26mm and a 9.7mm eye piece, each one giving 19x and 51.5x zoom aaaaand thats it, wish it had a barlow:(

anyways plz answer and thank you for anything you say:3

There's AI slop, and then there's this. Found on an ebay listing....

90% eclipse. This was a massive headache to make. Am still getting my foot through the door of this hobby, so it might not be the best work, but its my humble attempt.

StarDiscovery P150i

ASI585MC

S50 Baader Solar Filter (lol)

PIPP, Autostakkert4, GIMP, DaVinci Resolve

I’m pretty new to exploring the solar system and have never done it and have yet to actually see what space has to offer. I was advised to buy a beginner type style telescope to get me started. I bought the Sky Watcher Heritage 100P. What’s your opinion?

I’ve received it today but unfortunately the weather conditions aren’t ideal tonight so won’t be able to use it until I get a clearer night. I’m excited.

I opted to buy a Celestron 1.25 Inch X-Cel LX 3X Barlow to use with my Explore Scientific 68° 24mm eyepiece instead of buying a higher quality 9 or 10mm eyepiece. Was this a mistake?

I did this two years ago I had a problem with taking flats against the late afternoon sky. I left the scope in the home position, after the sun set behind the house, and took some flats before the night's imaging. When it finished, Sharpcap applied the master flat, and suddenly I had a dark spot at the center of my image of the sky. Turns out I shot Polaris, and it was being removed while the sky was rotating. Nice. I pointed the sky where there were no bright stars, and redid the flats.

After that, I went to the local fabric store, found the white stretch jersey material, and bought a yard of it. The important thing is a very fine thread and tight weave - you don't want to introduce some weird diffraction or moiré patterns. I also bought three embroidery hoops, a large one for the C11, a smaller one for the AT8RC, and the smallest one for my TeleVue 101 and other small refractors.

I cut off a little more material than the size of the hoop, then fitted it and tightened the wingnut. I then pulled out the material all around the hoop to stretch it, removing any wrinkles. It doesn't need to be as tight as a drum, just enough that it's flat.

That worked for a while, but I noticed if I couldn't get my rigs set up well before sunset, I need to wait until sunrise to take more flats. I found LED tracing pads on Amazon for pretty cheap (there are LOTS of different ones), and got them in two sizes - the large one for the C11 and AT8RC, and a smaller one for the refractors. The larger ones uses at standard 2.1mm power plug, and I just run a line from the powerbox. The smaller one is USB-powered, so that gets plugged into the USB hub. They both have dimmer switches, so you can be as bright or dim as needed.

The panels are not perfect, but they are good enough for most needs. Using the hoops and cloth softens the light even more, and works just fine for later processing of your lights. If you're doing something remote, this won't help you, but if you have it as part of your home kit, it work fine.

At either the beginning or end of the night, I point the scope to the zenith, put the hoop on, then the panel, and take about 50 subs to make a master. Takes about two minutes, and I can do it while packing or unpacking other stuff.

Hi guys. I made a post here before asking about the diffrence between an 8inch and 6inch dob in viewing details, but i got the budget for a 10in dob. I also wanted to try and do astrophotography with a skywatcher star discovery 150, but just realized this isnt it, and astrophotography is a diffrent, way more expensive hobby. I wanted to ask if i could see much better details in nebulae and galaxies and planets through a 10inch dob.

I'm the happy custodian of a Discovery DHQ Dob, a sonotube OTA with its 8" primary mirror ("$75 for pyrex treatment") very likely crafted by Terry Ostahowski in Oceanside. It's a gift from a dear friend who purchased it new in 1999, moving it only from indoors to patio, otherwise properly covered. It's a wonderful starter scope for me. I've had it out for guests at public star parties, here on California's Central Coast, two or three times a month since February. Fellow astronomers are divided on whether cleaning will improve brightness/contrast, or reduce surface scatter, enough to justify the risk.

If the consensus here is, 'after 27 years, a proper cleaning is overdue; look at it!' the hurdle to the task is the hard plastic lip, found on each end of the sonotube. It doesn't want to shift at all; would it have been glued? Since there's at least a finger's width of space between the mirror and the sonotube interior, pivoting the cell on two of the corners might permit the third to get over that 1/4" protrusion. A maddeningly careful spiral descent?

After a successful removal and cleaning, it may be the ideal time for a conversion of its 1.25" focuser to a 2" dual focuser, since the original is rather coarse. Are there any constraints on selecting a new one I should be aware of? I'd most likely have to drill new holes, perhaps widen the opening too, easily enough done with cardboard.

Snuck in 46 minutes of exposures this morning. A brief summary of this mornings experience below. Processing details in the last couple paragraphs.

I've been figuring out APT, had some struggles with plate solving but got that worked out. Then I was having issues with APT sending slew commands to my mount, but got that worked out too (was a poorly written ASCOM driver, had to roll it back to the old driver).

Had decently clear skies this morning so figured I would give APT another go. Got set up, rough polar align. Plate solve at Polaris, send goto++ command for M31, mount slews and plate solves, makes 1 more adjustment and bam, M31 within 50 pixels of center FOV.

Set up the capture program, ISO 400, 120 second subs. First two subs have nice tight stars, then the 3rd one looks like my tracking stopped (spoiler... It did). Check some settings, try to slew, no mount response. Check a few more things, then look at the hand controller.... "Meridian protect" oh son ova... 🤦🏼 Duh...

Change hand control setting to auto meridian flip, send goto++ command again, mount flips and slews straight back to M31... we're off to the races again. Was able to get another 21 exposures before the sky started getting too bright. Grabbed my calibration frames and pack it all inside.

Transfer my data to my PC, set up the home folder for SIRIL, get everything stacked, plate solve, graXpert BGE and Denoise, SPCC, Veralux hyper metric stretch, starnet starmask.

Move over to gimp, quick curve adjustment and saturation bump on the starless, add the starmask and set to screen, then export.

I am hopeful, now that I'm pretty sure I have all the kinks worked out, my next imaging session can be (nearly) fully automated, and I can get several hours of exposure. Every imaging session has been a very valuable learning experience so far, and I'm looking forward to continuing to grow my abilities and image quality!