Warning RA offset > 45 degree

[SkyExplorer]

Does anyone know what this message means after star alignment using a synscan hand controller ?? After this message I get an "Alignment failed" message.....

It's run firmware v3.27.

Thanks

[Cornelius Varley]

Have you an AZ-goto mount ? If you have you will need to reflash the handset to the correct version of the AZ firmware (AZ v3.07).

Peter

[SkyExplorer]

Hi,

I've got a HEQ5, with synscan running 3.27

[Cornelius Varley]

There was a thread last year about the same problem, I think this is the one Synscan not aligning. The same ra offset > 45 degree message is mentioned on the second page.

Peter

[OzDave]

In case this helps someone, I got this problem last night.

In my case I had just upgraded the firmware in my synscan handset from 3.23 to 3.27, and then all of a sudden I could not even do a 1-star alignment without getting the 45 degree warning.

The telltale sign is that you're at HOME position and the first slew goes nowhere near the target star. I was sure I had the settings correct. I looked at the utilities menu on the hand control and did SHOW INFORMATION -> TIME. This shows what the handset thinks is the local sidereal time. I checked this with an app I have on my iPhone and found that it was 2 hours and 20 minutes out.

So the handset was calculating the local sidereal time wrong, which explains why it cannot slew to anything accurately, since it thinks the stars are where they were 2hours and 20minutes ago.

Perplexed, I did a factory reset to the handset from the menus. Then I entered the settings again and checked the sidereal time. Same deal. Then I tried entering completely different setting data (latitude, longitude, time zone, everything) in the hope that this would force the handset to recalculate the sidereal time. It did, but of course I now had bogus data.

So, I restarted from scratch and entered my correct setting data, and finally the handset had managed to calculate the correct local sidereal time. And lo and behold, the first slew during alignment was pretty accurate.

This whole experience makes me wonder what on earth the software in these controllers is like. I mean, it's a pretty basic thing for a telescope control system to get right (calculating the local sidereal time correctly). No wonder people use EQMOD.

Hope this helps someone.

David