I have been very dissappointed with my telescope as the battery life seems to only be a few hours before it struggles to self align. Is there a gadget that will enable me to hook it up to a car battery, or the mains supply. Yours hopefully.

Aligning a scope requires several things to be correct.
1. You must follow the setup in manual 100%
2. You must pick the correct alignment stars. Most failed alignments are because you aligned on the wrong star. So alignment requires you to learn the names of a few bright stars and be able to spot them in the sky.
3. With many goto scopes there might be a "home position" to start the alignment. For example, tube pointed roughly North, and level. Check your manual for a "home position. Also time, date, and site must be correct.

Clear skies,
TelescopeMan
www.telescopeman.org and www.telescopeman.info

Malfunction of input circuit: voltage delivered is too low. The batteries may
be faulty or depleted. Wait for a few hours, leave the UPS switched on

If absence of input power (utility failure, maintenance work) is expected to last longer than a few hours, switch
off the UPS to save battery power. If the UPS input power is absent for several days and the UPS remains on
under no-load conditions, the batteries can be discharged very deeply, resulting in a short battery life time

The stars will always be "points in the sky" no matter what telescope.
The stars should be sharp, focused points in the center of view (more blurry towards the edges because of the stock eyepieces and the fast telescope mirror) if not, the telescope may need collimation. (look at instructions and/or search online. Plenty of instructions on the net.)

1. Get Stellarium or another fine astronomy program
2. During the day, point the telescope at a part of the landscape about 100 yards away.
3. Use the lowest power eyepiece (highest number) in the focal tube.
4. Center the landscape object in the telescope.
5. Align the finder scope so that it points exactly where the main telescope is.
6. At night, leave the scope out to reach thermal equilibrium (about an hour for small reflectors and refractors)
7. If the scope is on a EQ mount, polar align.
8. Point the finder at the moon. The moon should be in the main scope also.
9. Practice finding the moon before you start on the planets
10. Once you are comfortable with the moon and planets, you can go for the deep sky objects

Since you did not reply with make and model see the following general rules below. Always start with the highest number eyepiece (lowest magnification) and do NOT use the barlow until you get comfortable with the scope

1. Get Stellarium or another fine astronomy program
2. During the day, point the telescope at a part of the landscape about 100 yards away.
3. Use the lowest power eyepiece (highest number) in the focal tube.
4. Center the landscape object in the telescope.
5. Align the finder scope so that it points exactly where the main telescope is.
6. At night, leave the scope out to reach thermal equilibrium (about an hour for small reflectors and refractors)
7. If the scope is on a EQ mount, polar align.
8. Point the finder at the moon. The moon should be in the main scope also.
9. Practice finding the moon before you start on the planets
10. Once you are comfortable with the moon and planets, you can go for the deep sky objects

The battery in my laptops only seem to last 1 or 2 years.

Yes, I would say it's a bad battery.

Try to get a higher capacity one from amazon.com. I upgraded from a 6 cell (1 or 2 hours of battery life) to a 9 cell (3 or 4 hours of battery life) on my Acer Aspire for about $39.

Prices will vary depending on make and model and capacity.

You need to synchronize the telescope with stellarium. Center the telescope on a known star, then select the same star on the laptiop and 'synch' with it.

Is it like THIS telescope?
http://www.opticsplanet.net/konus-knonusmotor-130-telescope-1786.html

The focuser mechanism is at the FRONT end of the telescope. The Mirror is in the back-end or bottom of the telescope. This scope is on an equitorial mount, which means it must be POLAR ALIGNED in order to work. You can get a rough polar alignment by using the star Polaris (the North star).

We never recommend an EQ mount to beginners. Polar alignment introduces an additional beginner frustration with using the telescope. Read these web sites to get an idea of polar aligning a telescope.

Their are TWO knobs on the telescope that control Right Ascention and Declination movement. Declination IS your latitude, so the angle must be set to where you live. I am at latitude 32 degrees N --- so the angle is 32 degrees, which is where Polaris is above the horizon.

Read these:
http://www.tucsonastronomy.org/observing-resources/Polar%20Alignment.pdf

http://www.astronomy.net/articles/4/polaralign.html

A bad cable can cause those symptoms, along with discharged batteries. You never said what make or model or type of telescope you own.

Hi,
In most laptops the standard idle life is around 3 - 4 hours. The drain from the internet can cut this down to between 1 - 1 and a half hours. Using games is around the same or less than what the internet takes and if your using an office application it is around 3 - 4 hours.
Using the laptop for power hungry multitasking will reduce battery life dramatically.




Regards.

Please be absolutley sure that the mount is orthanogol (Level in all Directions ) to the plane of the instrument