EQ8 EQMOD and EQDIR Cables on Vista

My new EQ8 mount was delivered the other day and I noticed straightaway the handset port has changed since the EQ6 version which was a 9 pin serial RS232 type connection.

The new EQ8 handset connector is a standard Ethernet type connection. So this meant I needed a new EQDIR connection cable. Yes I know, I could have taken apart the EQ6 one and made my own cable. But this time I could not be bothered.

So anyway, I bought a HitecAstro EQDIR cable, the newer ones where there is no box of tricks, just a cable. These cables also work with the EQ5 and EQ6-AZ GT.

I started off installing the Prolific USB to Serial drivers, which I got from the HitecAstro support pages, and then I plugged in the cable into the PC and into the EQ8 mount. The cable was recognised by Vista and given a COM port number. Great so far!

I then fired up EQMOD Toolbox and tried to get the toolbox to find the COM port for me. But it could not find the COM port the computer had given the cable. This always worked for me, when on XP. So immediately I thought there was something wrong with the cable, had I bought the wrong one etc.

So I emailed HitecAstro and David Jackson replied nearly straight away, he then offered to phone me back and walk me through the set-up. That’s brilliant customer service. Well once I had provided my phone number to David and he phoned up I had sorted it out.

The problem was that the auto COM port selection just did not seem to work anymore – it must be Vista. I decided to choose my COM port and then just connect to EQMOD – and it worked!

So if the auto searching for the COM port does not find your mount port, then don’t worry straight away. Just select the one it should be and try it out.

Helios Nature Sport 7×50 Binoculars Review

I already have a rather large pair of 15×70 binoculars. These are fine and give you a great view, but sometimes too much magnification, that you don’t know where you are in the sky. Plus they are also very heavy and you can’t keep them still in your hands for too long, they really need to be attached to a tripod.

So I wanted a pair of binoculars that were the complete opposite to the ones I have. So I went for the lowest power magnification I could find at 7x but I still wanted to gather a fair bit of light so went for 50mm objective lenses.

The Helios Nature sport 7×50 binoculars provided me with the specification I wanted, plus they were rubberised and quite light.

I did have a budget, but didn’t want a cheap pair as I am always worried about cheap binoculars and how they may easily go wrong. I paid £60 for the Helios Naturesport binoculars.

One of the major benefits was that these binoculars are ‘focus free’. There is no middle focuser on the binoculars. I think that’s a bonus, as that’s another part that can’t go wrong. The focus is fixed using a specially designed eyepiece that allows the image to be perfectly sharp from the near focus point of 20m to infinity.

I was amazed to see how these ‘focus free’ binoculars actually worked. When I bought them I only managed to look down a street in the daytime. But I was pleasantly surprised how sharp the view was to infinity and as close as 18m away.

The binoculars come with a padded carry case was well as end caps and cleaning cloth. They also have a binocular screw hole so you can connect them to a tripod if required.

The anti-reflection multi-coatings and BK7 optics (all lenses and prisms) deliver excellent light transmission and sharp high-contrast image replication.

So what are they like at night time for astronomy? Well, you can see Jupiter and its moons. You can easily see the Pleiades with a lot of sky around them. The moon is not that big but you can just make out the craters along the terminator. I would suggest more magnification if you want really good lunar views.

For an idea of what the field of view is like, you can fit the whole of Orion’s belt and sword into the field of view and make out the Orion Nebula.

The great thing is you don’t have to focus, just point them up to whatever you want and view! Easy.

Magnification: 7x
Brightness: 28.35
Twilight rate: 25.8
FOV: 114m @ 1000m,
Dimensions: 185 x 62 x 170mm
Weight: 780g
Close focus 15m

by Daniel Coe

Astrofest 2014 Discounts

Will we see a wide range of discounts at Astrofest in 2014? I do hope so, as there was very little discounting at Astrofest 2013.

Keep your eyes out this weekend for retailers who also offer astronomy discounts online as well as at the show, if you cannot make it.

So far I have found:

Cambridge University Press – discounts released Friday 7th February here: https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/conferences/astrofest-2014/

Telescope House – 10% off all in stock items (except Skywatcher telescopes and mounts nor megadeals) online or at the show.

First Light Optics – discounts on Skywatcher and Helios products for Stargazers Lounge users only with 50+ posts.

If you find more please tell me.

By Daniel Coe