monkeyboy

That was q3 I was saving that for another day! Okay, I think I understand now. I reckon I confused the software by having the main scope pointing in the wrong direction at the start. Has I then done as you say and manually pointed it to the selected star it probably would have been fine. I was over thinking it, confused by how far off it was. Of course it's raining tonight...

Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to respond. It's much appreciated. Distilling it all down, I think the biggest mistake I made was that I left the scope rotated along the dec axis before trying to find Arcturus. Had I then used the handset controls to go find it, it probably would have adjusted itself and been fine but I was so thrown by being so far off that I stopped. I'm using the 'ScopeTool' app on my phone, and I'm pretty sure the tripod/mount is level when I start. It sounds like I made the right decision regarding the reticule. Hoping for clear skies tonight (can anyone remember an April so dry?) so I can go confirm. Thanks again.

Hi all. I'm a complete beginner, just trying to get to grips with this. Under normal circumstances I'd pop along to the local astronomoy club (I'm in Edinburgh) and see if I can get somebody more experienced to work out what I'm doing wrong, but under lockdown that's a non-starter. I'm hoping that one of you will be able to work out from my description what it is I'm missing... The issue I'm struggling with is about set up and alignment. I have a Skywatcher Evostar 80ED mounted on a HEQ5 Pro mount. My observing site is on the patio at the back of the house. It's not perfect, but with the lights off there's mostly just the city light pollution. It's class 6 bortle. Not really that dark, but dark enough for what I'm trying to achieve at the moment. The patio faces south, but I can see polaris over the roof. Can't see the lower northern sky. I've gone through aligning the reticule and think that's pretty good. Same for the finder scope. And after several failed attempts and frustrated hours in the dark, I realised that the problem I was having with finding Polaris through the polar scope was that a) you have to turn on the mount first so that the polar scope illuminates and you can see the markings and b) you then have to turn down the LED so that you can see anything other than the markings! Last night, for the first time, I managed to get polar alignment sorted - Polaris on the little circle in the right place (or at least, I think so - see my first question below). So I moved onto the handset alignment process. One star alignment - Arcturus. Off we go - mount whirs into life, starts slewing and stops... pointing nowhere near Arcturus. It's closer to pointing at Vega! I try a few more times - no joy. Spend a little time manually scanning the sky. Trudge back inside and scratch my head. Here's a couple of things that I can think of that may be going wrong. 1) When I perform the polar slignment, my reticule isn't the 'right way up' compared to a normal clock. The markings are visible, but instead of 12 at the top, 12 is rotated (I forget exactly how much). Does the reticule have to be oriented like a real clock to work? Or if Polaris should be at 3, for example, do I put it 3 as marked on the reticule or 3 in comparison to a normal clock? I doubt this is the issue I'm facing but it would be useful to confirm. 2) When I perform polar alignment I have to rotate the scope through the declination axis so that the polar scope barrel isn't blocked. Once I've done that, do I need to rotate it back before I move onto the star aslignment process? Should I rotate the scope so that Polaris is visible through it? I'm sure this is all pretty obvious stuff, and it's probably covered in these forums numerous times, in which case I apologise for not finding it. I'm sure many of you go through these steps every session and will know what I'm doing wrong. Thanks in advance, Chris.

Thanks for the replies. I have a Skywatcher 80ED DS-Pro, mounted on a HEQ5 Pro. I'll be posting shortly in the 'beginners' section to ask my question I think I have the finder scope and reticule properly aligned. Haven't dared to move onto the higher powered eyepiece yet - having enough trouble at low power! I'm sure my difficulties will be something silly/obvious...

Hi all. Earlier this year I bought my first ever telescope. I've been talking about it for years (if you ask my wife, 'for ever') and finally pulled the trigger earlier this year. After a few clear nights recently I've been trying to get to grips with my new 'toy', which turns out to be slightly more difficult than I had hoped/expected. Ultimately I'd like to try my hand at astrophotography, but for now I'd be happy enough just to point it at the sky and no what I'm looking at! Anyway, 'hello' to everyone on there. Please be patient with my dumb questions :)