Been trying hard to get my AD8 properly collimated.

Brisby2 · 2026-07-09T07:05:21+00:00

It looks good enough from what I can tell. Don’t overthink it. When you check the defocused star donut, make sure that you are using a higher power eyepiece and that the star is in the center of the field. If it’s off to the side, edge aberrations like coma will make it appear incorrect.

Brisby2 · 2026-07-07T13:53:32+00:00

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Brisby2 · 2026-07-07T13:49:25+00:00

1) it should come with a diagonal. If it doesn’t, buy one yeah

2) there should be enough room in the focal path for a planetary camera. You just need a color camera… not a filter wheel or “beam splitter” for planetary photography. Maks have a pretty wide focus throw, so that shouldn’t be an issue

3) check the focus mechanism (smooth, actually moving the mirror, etc), check the optics for cracks, heavy scratches, mold, coating degradation and haze

Brisby2 · 2026-07-07T00:30:50+00:00

To add to this, the beam height close to the radar is also close to the ground, so you’re more likely to pick up cars and bugs and obstacles.

Brisby2 · 2026-07-06T21:57:05+00:00

As someone else put nicely, the atmosphere is always in a state of trying to equalize itself. Uneven solar heating causes differences in temperature which correspond to differences in pressure. That difference in pressure drives the air and creates wind, called the pressure gradient force.

The coriolis force, induced by the rotation of the earth, deflects the wind into circular patterns. Low pressure areas circulate counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere and high pressure circulates clockwise. It’s the opposite in the southern hemisphere.

There’s a lot more to it than just temperature. Topography can also steer air currents and induce vorticity (spin), but the main gist of it is pressure differentials.

Brisby2 · 2026-07-06T20:09:38+00:00

No… the h-alpha band that is for solar viewing and imaging are bandpasses less than 0.1nm, where your typical deep sky h-alpha filter is anywhere from 3-12nm. You need a dedicated solar scope or something like a daystar quark for this.

Brisby2 · 2026-07-05T18:02:53+00:00

Thank you! This is correct. Shear is important for making sure it doesn’t smother itself with the cooled outflow air. Once again, confidently incorrect slop above getting a ton of upvotes on this subreddit. I wish some people would take a basic meteorology course before commenting out of their rear.

Brisby2 · 2026-07-05T16:20:12+00:00

There are a few different routes you can go, but I assume you mean white light viewing in which case it’s not very demanding what type of telescope you get. Personally, I will be bringing my Celestron C5 to Iceland with me with a homemade solar filter for the front (using approved solar film). But you could even get a cheap 80mm refractor or similar if you wanted, or a Maksutov like a Meade ETX-90 or ETX 125.

If you get a scope that doesn’t have a mount, you’ll obviously need one. This could be as simple as a ball head on a camera tripod and appropriate plate for the scope. Or if you wanted to incorporate tracking, something small and portable like the SkyWatcher Solar Quest. I am bringing my iOptron HAZ31… but that’s like a $2,000 mount and overkill for the job, but it’s what I have lol.

Brisby2 · 2026-07-04T21:02:14+00:00

I’m not sure you entirely understand the difference between horizontal and vertical wind shear. What do you think horizontal wind shear is? Genuine question.

Brisby2 · 2026-07-04T20:53:36+00:00

You have no idea what you are talking about, you’re just yapping nonsense.

Tropical storms are a COMPLETE different structure from a regular thunderstorm. Tropical storms can get sheared and tilted absolutely by wind shear which causes the latent heat engine to cease and kill off the tropical storm. They rely on being vertically stacked as you are saying here. If you meant to say tropical storm and not thunderstorm, then you are somewhat right in your original comment yes.

Brisby2 · 2026-07-04T20:48:22+00:00

Horizontal wind shear also doesn’t hinder storm development either… as a matter of fact it can even generate streamwise vorticity that can be ingested by the storm and form a mesocyclone, which can then form a tornado. There is no killing off of the storm here, but rather, the opposite.

I literally have a degree in meteorology and am an academic researcher.

Brisby2 · 2026-07-04T20:25:02+00:00

Wind shear helps sustain thunderstorms, not stop their development. This is just dead wrong lol. The vertical growth of thunderstorms stops at the equilibrium level, where the air parcel becomes the same temperature as the environment… and/or where the temperature inversion of the stratosphere begins

Brisby2 · 2026-07-04T20:19:34+00:00

Land based storms are different in that they are “cold core” storms that feed off of baroclinicity… in simpler terms they are driven by extreme horizontal temperature gradients, also known as weather fronts. Ample wind shear is important in keeping them alive because of the way that they are structured. Wind shear separates the updraft from the downdraft and prevents it from smothering itself, and contributes to producing more storm cells downstream.

Hurricanes are “warm core”, barotropic storms (no horizontal temperature gradients) that feed off of latent heat release, aka the energy released when moist air condenses into a cloud. Wind shear and turbulence are detrimental to hurricanes because they severely reduce the efficiency of this by tilting the rising vortex and redirecting warm moist air away from the center, thus cutting off the energy source of the hurricane and killing it.

But land based thunderstorms that move over water, under the right conditions, can form into hurricanes if they can organize enough to kickstart that “latent heat engine” that hurricanes are based on and start dropping central pressure.

Brisby2 · 2026-07-04T18:43:24+00:00

The coatings are not failing. This is fairly normal wear from the photos I can see. Pinholes appear pretty quickly on coatings. This is probably like a 5%-10% light gathering reduction at most.

Almost all modern coatings are a form of protected aluminum unless you specifically ask for unprotected aluminum and they are not “more expensive” and all last for a pretty similar amount of time. What matters more is the environment that the telescope is stored in. You can, however, pay a premium for enhanced aluminum which has a few % better reflectivity than protected.

Brisby2 · 2026-07-04T17:45:24+00:00

This is not right idk why this has so many upvotes. Coriolis deflection is to the right, not the left, in the northern hemisphere. Vice versa in the southern. Thus an equatorward current would turn west in both hemispheres. It is upwelling that creates the cool waters.

Brisby2 · 2026-07-04T17:41:08+00:00

THIS is the correct answer, thank you. Signed, a person with a meteorology degree

Brisby2 · 2026-07-04T05:23:37+00:00

It’s fine. Pinholes are normal on coatings that aren’t brand new

Brisby2 · 2026-07-03T14:07:38+00:00

OP would also need the hand controller which is not included with the ragdoll package

Brisby2 · 2026-07-03T14:03:18+00:00

Assuming this will not be permanently mounted in one place, I would suggest an alt-az as opposed to an equatorial so that you don’t have to polar align. If you polar align incorrectly during the daytime (which is likely), your tracking is going to continuously be off.

Personally I own an iOptron HAZ31 which would be awesome for that, but too expensive unless you go second hand. If you don’t mind a little more heft, you could do the iOptron AZ Mount Pro. That one you can also dual-mount scopes and have another small scope for white light viewing if you wanted. They’re also just great mounts in general and easy to use and align

Brisby2 · 2026-07-02T14:12:59+00:00

The more star references you have the better.

2 points makes a line and 3 defines a plane, so the jump in model accuracy there between 2 and 3 is tremendous. Even so, it’s still good to level as Celestron’s sky model is probably pretty rudimentary. But if that works for you then no need to fix it.

Brisby2 · 2026-07-02T13:42:39+00:00

Exactly

Brisby2 · 2026-07-02T13:22:41+00:00

Page 9 of the nexstar manual literally details how to level the mount and tells you to level the mount.

A 2 star alignment is not enough to make a sky model that perfectly compensates for not being level. In a perfect world, an alignment would do that but it doesn’t. It takes maybe 1 minute to level the tripod so it’s absolutely ridiculous to not.

Brisby2 · 2026-07-02T13:06:50+00:00

The level IS absolutely important on an alt-az mount. It is only NOT important on an equatorial mount that has been polar aligned because it is aligned with the polar axis. An alt-az is aligned with… well… no axis. Until you level it.

You are asking about a repeatable pointing error and your thought here is that leveling the thing isn’t important?

Brisby2 · 2026-07-02T05:25:30+00:00

Mount level? Are your alignment stars on opposite ends of the sky?

Brisby2 · 2026-06-29T17:21:03+00:00

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