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Hi, I'm having trouble aligning my telescope. I can polar align fine, and I set the scope up in the direction of the pole star, and I use my DSLR (live view) to calibrate the stars whilst 2 star aligning. I then pick a star in the control handset and I check the star using an app is available (I have a view of it), when it is I confirm an dthe scope moves to align that star. However, the star is hardly in shot/view and the scope is pointing in a slightly different direction than the app. (star walk 2) So I'm having all manner of difficulties aligning. Any help is much appreciated Thanks

Hello, I am having some trouble collimating my 12inch f4.5 truss dobsonian and getting different results between the Cheshire and the laser method. Everything looks very aligned through the Cheshire key (picture attached)...however if I then insert the laser, everything is not aligned, the reflection of the secondary is not hitting the centre of the circle of the Primary and the reflection of the Laser is way off....(pictures attached) I have been told that 'the reflection of the secondary in the primary will not be centered with the other reflections, but that ok, as the secondary itself is not exactly centered on the optical path (there is a tilt, which is due to the focal ratio ( fd 4,5). If it where fd 5 or more, it would be centered, and there would not be any tilt' If this is the case, then I guess it is normal for the laser not to be aligned or am i missing something ? Thanks a lot for the help :)'

29/01/2015 - 30/01/2015 New toy day - laser alignment tool. I thought the 130SLT was working pretty well until I checked the collimation: way out. There should be a warning that your new scope will be off focus until a laser alignment tool is used and the collimation corrected. So that done I got the scope outside only to have the batteries die. Then I found that my 12V PSU is the wrong polarity. So I got the NiMH fast-charged, and of course the skies clouded over 8/8 with some heavy stuff from the west for the rest of the foreseeable.

So the little circular bubble level is weak. But how to improve the levelling stage a head of the alignment stage? A traditional level like this one Or a simple multi purpose one like this one? And we do this on the tripod before adding the mount & OTA? The mount looks gently curved. How do we check that for level or do we trust the ‘fit’?

Hi there. I'm a planetary guy with a Meade LT6 ACF Alt/Az mounted. No problems... The issue is happened to a friend of mine with his new AVX Advance + C9.25. I have minimal experience using EQ mounted scopes. Here is what we do to setup: Level tripod with one leg pointed north.Add scope align the notches on the mount. Set latitude to our position. No polar scope so we just roughly centre Polaris through the 'hole'Perform either a 2 star alignment or use the Star Sense. After this we slew to Saturn. It's towards the left of the FOV.Now we use ASPA. It tells us we have a slight error. We choose a star and it slews to it. The slews to the place it ought to be if polar alignment was correct.We are now supposed to adjust the Alt and AZ of the mount to centre the star, in first NS and EW. This is where we seem to stuggle. I manage to centre the first and second part. Then the scope loses the plot. Alignment reads XXX XXX. Trying to slew to Saturn again will move the scope into very peculiar positions! Looking at the latitude dial now reads something completely different to our actually location.... Any obvious errors that I am making? Thanks for any input. Skips

Hi All, I know this is a pretty beat up subject, and I truly apologize for offending anyone, I need clarification of my cone error correction process. Right now I have the very rare for me opportunity to see polaris from my back yard. In the next few days the security lights will be fixed and polaris will be gone for me. I checked both my SN10 and LX200 and the scopes or off bad enough so that if I center polaris with the ota on the east side of the mount it will be out of the field of view on a 20mm 70degree eyepiece. I would like to correct that if at all possible and I would like to take advantage of polaris being visible to do it. I watched the astronomy shed video's and decided based on my comfort level on following his methodology. The problem is at a crucial point in his video I don't quite understand what he is saying. So below is my process I only use reticle eyepieces and everything that came stock with an IEQ45pro. Would someone please look this over and tell me if this will work. Please forgive the cross-post I posted the procedure elsewhere and haven't gotten an answer I am running out of time. The park people are quick to respond when their security lights are out, after katrina I think they fixed those before they fixed the townhouses! Based on what I thought I heard this is the procedure I am following, I just need someone to look it over and say yes you got that correct or that will work either one works for me 1. Level your mount 2. Align Polaris in the center of the polar scope reticle using the altitude and alt-az knobs this is an Ioptron polar scope so there are no crosshairs on the polar scope itself. Which is a shame I would like to use them to find zero point. 3. Swing the OTA to the eastern horizon using a level on the weight bar 4. Use DEC to center Polaris on the eye piece reticle horizontal line. 5. Use the alt-az knobs to bring Polaris to the center of the reticle, don’t touch the dovetail adjustment screws when the OTA is on the east side. 6. Loosen the RA clutch knobs then flip the OTA to the western side of the mount, using a leveler on the weight bar. 7. Use the Dec axis to center Polaris on the reticle horizontal line. 8. Use the adjuster screws to on your dovetail plate to take out about half the offset of Polaris from the reticle center point, do not use your alt-az knobs at all. (here is where I get confused on the YouTube video it sounds like he says "then center using your alt-az knobs" but I can't be certain) 9. loosen the ra clutch knobs and swing the tube back to the east side of the mount. 10. Use DEC to center Polaris on the eye piece reticle horizontal line. 11. use the alt-az knobs to bring Polaris to the center of the reticle. 12. repeat steps 4 - 8 until Polaris stays pretty much so centered in eyepiece on the western and eastern sides of the mount. As an added bonus if you own and IEQ45Pro and have a good easy way of find zero point on this thing I would appreciate any insight. Thank You in Advance Troy

Hi all, I was just wondering... I've been looking for eyepieces to do drift alignment with, and as per this video: http://www.andysshot...tAlignment.html and after trying out with my own 5mm eyepiece (without reticle), I wanted a 5mm reticle eyepiece. But searching it turns out there are practically only 12,5mm illuminated reticle eyepieces... The 5mm Orion seems to have been discontinued... Anybody have any idea why this is? Did the 5mm cost too much? As I see it a 5 mm would do nicely, because one easily sees the direction a star goes, when turning off the motor drive, and I'm guessing it would also be better for detecting the drift. More so than with a 12,5mm... Thanks for any ideas, thoughts! Gerhard.

Hi All I need the combined brains and experience of SGL please, I'm stuck!! I've been an astronomer for 30+ years and have had several Skywatcher telescopes over time, including my current EQ6-Pro for about 10 years. This is largely irrelevant to my post, except that I hope to convey that I'm not a total novice to getting telescopes to work as they should...although I feel like I am today. I recently picked up a very battered early-version EQ6 with 10" reflector, cheap. It hadn't been looked after well and when I first fired it up...it didn't fire up at all. No life. I noticed that the power supply wasn't suitable as it only had a 0.5A output. So after digging out a spare one from the cupboard outputting 12V 1.25A, the Synscan chirped into life. My first attempt to slew the mount was met with a horrible grinding noise and refusal to move. Needless to say, I didn't do that again. Clearly the motor/gear train was seized. So a quick look on the internet brought up the amazing website posted by Astro Baby, with step by step instructions on how to strip and rebuild an EQ5 or EQ6 mount. This kept me entertained for a couple of nights, followed by a lovely smooth running mount slewing in RA and DEC as it should. Many thanks Astro Baby! Last night was the first clear night, so I took the mount out, popped the 10" scope on (had a full respray, new finder, new focuser and laser collimation), and awaited the fall of darkness. Here comes the rub. I roughly aligned the mount on Polaris, not bothering too much for this first test. The Synscan controller is (unfortunately) running Version 2.05, which is one of the early versions that are not flash upgradable. Although I didn't realise this until after I had downloaded all of the upgrade files from OVL's website. ? When I picked the first alignment star (Capella, rising nicely in the north-east sky), the mount did something completely unexpected and slewed around to east of the meridian and pointed somewhere in the direction of Alcor! What the ...? After several unsuccessful attempts at carrying out an alignment, I gave up and looked online for any similar problems. I've checked and confirmed all of the following things are correct: Location - yep as per my Cumbria coordinates Date - yep in the right format (mm/dd/yyyy) that good old confusing American format Time - yep I tried with BST and without BST (not really expecting any significant difference) Made sure the mount was in the "parked" position (weights down, scope pointing towards Polaris) before turning the mount on Tried all sorts of initial alignment stars, but none of them were in the right area of the sky at all Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find anything on the web that offers a solution. I did wonder if I've done something during the disassembly of the mount - but I know the mount doesn't have encoders on it. I didn't see anything that looked like a counter of any kind? I don't think it can be anything to do with the power supply...surely that couldn't introduce such a wild error in pointing? It's like the handset has no idea where it is. Any help would be much appreciated. This was going to be a second mount for me, but at this rate it's going to go on the scrap heap. I did think about buying a V3 handset, but didn't want to commit another £120 in case it's something in the mount itself that's the problem. Yours hopefully Jeremy

I'm looking for a simple algorithm to compare astronomical images (of the same sky region) against each other, compute their movement and rotation, to finally stack them. At the moment I'm already having a more or less working algorithm. First I extract all the stars out of an image (including information like brightness and FWHM), and then I walk trough all the resulting "points" and create triangles out of the current point and those two other stars that have the shortest distance to this star. This list of triangles is created for every image. After this I take one image as reference and then I walk through the list of triangles in the reference image to find a triangle in the other image with the same length of each side of the triangle (I also "allow" some tolerance due minimal relative differences of the star positions in each image). For this matches I calculate movement and rotation relative to the reference image. Last step is to find the matched triangles that have to same relative movement and rotation like the other matches. This is done by calculating the standard deviation, sorting out triangles that are not within 1 or 2 sigma and repeat this process until I have a very small standard deviation. The last part, finding "valid" triangles with the same movement/rotation, is working fine. The problem is that sometimes I have only like 2 or 3 "valid" triangles out of 300 initial triangles. All other triangles have side lengths different to those of the reference image. So I assume it's the way I generate my initial triangles which causes the problem. Sortings stars by their brightness and using this data to generate the triangles also doesn't work. So is there a better way to create the initial triangles in all the images? Clear Skies, David

Hi all! Yesterday good weather, so had my first go at drift alignment with my new reticulated eyepiece. I took my time to figure out well the various steps in the right order, etc... At one time, pointing a star in the east, I think I overdid the correction on the Altitude, because the star started drifting a lot, so I started again from the beginning... As always a learning curve! :-) But I had fun doing it. It took me a lot of time, but finally I got to shooting some subs, and these are the results: M57 @ 38 second subs: M13 @ 63 second subs: The usual coma problem is visible, but I am nevertheless quite satisfied with this first try... The stars look pretty good, if not enlarged too much ;-) Opins? Any feedback would be appreciated! Gerhard.

Hello , I am physics student in Turkey . I have used telescopes but they were manual mount because of that I do not have any experiences with GO TO mounts . I upload photos and I pressed alignment button before finding 3 or 2 stars . Still ı did not find any stars from catalog . I really watched many videos but I did not do it well my process still not continue . 12 photos I upload , first photo teleskop , last photo is the my last step , which button should I have press?

A very simple question - should I be able to see Polaris in my main scope in the Home position once it is polar aligned? I seem to have a lot of cone error. I have adjusted the polar scope reticule and that looks ok. I centre Polaris in the fov of the polarscope but in the home position Polaris is way out of the fov of both the finder and the main scope. I am planning a daytime cone error correction but the question I asked is simply to make sure this is what I should be expecting. Scope is 8” f5.6 Newtonian, guide scope is 60mm and the mount an HEQ5 pro. I’m struggling as I want to be able to use sharpcap polar alignment routine with my ZWO 120 colour camera. Any advice welcomed.

This planetary conjunction forms a triangle with Jupiter(left), Mercury(top) & Venus(right) Pentax 645D Pentax 500mm lens @ f8 Exp. 1/4 sec. ISO 200 26th May 2013 Pentax Digital Camera Utility 4 Conjunction of Jupiter Mercury & Venus 26th May 2013 from Kelso by mikeyscope, on Flickr

Hey guys, Pretty new to the forums, so hello everyone! I have been using a Vixen Super Polaris EQ mount with a Vixen 80m refractor for many, many years. During this period I was not caring too much about polar alignment at all, but instead just to whip it out and have a look around. Recently I have purchased myself a SkyWatcher 200 P reflector with a HEQ5 SynScan mount which together is extremely heavy in a bid to start learning some astrophotography as in East Anglia light pollution isn't too common. My garden does have 'some' solid ground but this is not in an ideal location and so I will most definitely have to use my gardens boggy grass. I am worried due to the weight and the boggy grass, my scope will slowly sink down whilst taking shots. Do any of you guys have any proven solutions or mods that you have come up with in a similar situation to eradicate your set up sinking on loose ground? Just curious if this has been dealt with before in a smart manor. Cheers!

Hi - Was wondering if anyone could help me? I've recieved a second hand Orange C8 but it has a rotating secondary. It just spins around in the corrector plate with about .5 mm wiggle room. To make things worse I think the previous owner has attempted to remove the corrector at some stage so I'm not sure what to do. I know I have to align all 3 optical elements but not the foggest where to start. The corrector appears to have two lines etched on the edge at right angles. Say 12 and 3 O'clock - but dont know if this is 11 or 2 O'clock or what ever configuration. I can not discern an corresponding marks on the tube body or down at bottom on the mirror. Ant

Hello guys, I recently got into astronomy so I bought my first telescope. I've read through several articles and the recommendation for a beginner's telescope (value/price) was Celestron Astromaster 130EQ-MD. I bought this from someone who was not really using it and it is in a very good condition. Prior to actually purchasing this, I've watched countless videos on how the telescope works, what needs to be done - latitude, RA/DEC alignment, polar alignment, etc.. After reading through all available manuals and videos, I finally brought it home from the seller (they've had it for around 5 years but it wasn't used much). After setting up the tripod, mounting the telescope and familiarising myself with all the different knobs, I pointed the mount/telescope towards north. The first thing I had to do was setting up the latitude. Since I am based in London, the latitude is around 52 degrees. Afterwards, I had to align the declination axis so the telescope can be balanced. As I understand it, you should be able to move it to any position on the axis and it should stay in that position. If the front or rear was heavier, I would either pushing or pulling the telescope after unlocking the brackets holding it together. This is where the issues began, I could balance the telescope so it doesn't move while in the horizontal position, however, when pointing it towards north, it would exclusively lean towards one direction - to the left. If the telescope was pointing to north, north-east or east, it would pull towards the west all the time. It is probably easier to show it in the video. I've spent three days trying to balance the telescope by using different methods and it just would not work. I've also tried balancing the RA axis first. This could be somehow done, but the declination axis would still pull the telescope to the left. It is extremely frustrating as I don't know what could be causing this. Balancing the telescope should be relatively easy from what I have heard - either push it or pull it depending on where the weight is. However, I have been really struggling to get it set-up. I would be thankful for any suggestions and please feel free to ask any questions so I can help with finding out what is wrong. Thank you. VID_20190918_202940.mp4

Hello, Since a couple of months I'm a EQ6-R Pro user. So far I've been using the synscan handcontroller to do the star alignment. I would like the use software like stellarium, kstars or cartes du ciel thru the direct connection with mount, so no longer using the synscan handcontroller. I've tried but when I search an object and make the software slew to it, it's way off. I'm quite confident with my polar alignment as I'm using the QHYCCD PolarScope (and furthermore I've read on this forum that polar alignment and star alignment are not the same). Can somebody please explain how to do star alignment with software like stellarium, kstars or cartes du ciel - I suppose there's is some general procedure that applies to software like the three I mention? Many thanks, AstroRookie

New Celestron 8SE owner and not impressed. Alignment is a bitch. I finally "succeeded" with the three-star align and then the scope would only take me sort of close to where I wanted to go. Had to adjust manually. How spot on is alignment supposed to be? Tracking? I can't tell from the inadequate instruction manual how to engage tracking once I'm on an object. The whole exercise was supposed to allow me to do some astrophotography with my Canon 5D and related camera-to-scope attachments. Finally, I was surprised to learn (I think) that one needs to go through the alignment process for each session. The "computer" apparently doesn't hold the alignment. That right? Again, I can't find any reference in the instruction manual! If this is the case, it's certainly inconvenient. Any help or advice will be appreciated.

Hi guys, new to SG lounge and new to the hobby. I have just bought my first EQ Mount (Used 2018 model HEQ5 pro, belt modded). I hate to be the newbie to ask questions about polar alignment, but I have what I hope to be a relatively simple question to answer, yet have had no luck with the search bar. When my mount is in the home position (counterweight bar down) and tripod north my polar scope reticle is orientated as per the attached photograph (photo 1). When I was reading prior to getting the mount I had simply assumed that the reticle would be oriented with 0 being directly at the top and 6 at the bottom when in home position. As this is not the case, my question regards what I do during the process of polar alignment. Do I rotate the R.A. so that 0 is at the top and 6 is at the bottom and then place Polaris in the relevant position as per my iOS polar alignment app (photo 2) or do I need to somehow rotate the reticle within the polar scope such that the reticle is orientated vertically in the home position? Are the date and time dials on the mount itself obsolete now that we have the privilege of apps that do the work for us? Apologies if this is a basic question that has been covered before.

Hi Guys, Desperately need help here. I have recently got a setup Skywatcher 200 with EQ5 so a newbiee me. Anyway I am setting up Polar alignment perfect. Using compas, mount bolts and lat is spot on. GPS and time is also spot on. Using 3 star alignment as well as 2 star alignment. Synscan goes to the first star which is not even in FOV of the finder scope, Then I use hand held to get it in view and alligned. Second star nearly is on target and with handheld I align using the handheld. 3 rd star is also way out. Once aligned I go to an object which does not center at all and is in the top left of the FOV. I have to keep re-aligning every 15 min to see anything. However Polaris remains where it should be using polar alignment scope. What am I missing? Pls help

I've just recently flashed to the new EQ 3.32 handset firmware. However, there are still a few things i'm still unsure of - big shock there When I set-up each time - i cant have a permanent fixture unfortunately - I often get confused as to how exactly I should go about aligning the mount. I have heard people say to set the lat for my area (ie 52) , and occasionally its been referred to as a seperate step to getting polaris in the polarscope. This is likely my mistake, but, to my way of thinking, wouldn't getting polaris in the crosshairs of the pol-scope do the same thing as setting my lattitude correctly? The goal being in both cases to get accurately polar-aligned.? Which brings me to the other query. After levelling mount and aiming 'N' leg North, then roughly sighting polaris in the P/scope - how would I adjust things to get polaris at the right 'hour' in the reticule? So far I use a combination of adjusting the lat/az bolts and nudging the actual tripod a bit by grabbing the rear two legs while looking through p/scope. This seems a tad sloppy to me, as the two different ways of adjusting the pole star's position in the reticule might leave room for error, or rather more error than necessary. Ive not yet tried the new firmware - could anyone be nice and explain the steps so an idiot - thats me btw - can follow them? Skywatcher actually have quite a good instruction manual for this update on their site, highly recommended, but after a few reads I still need a little clarification. Regards Aenima

Hello everyone, I'm wondering if I could get some help, sort of ripping my hair out a little. I have the EXOS2 PMC-8 and last night I used Sharpcap to Polar align, I set the mount up as usual and adjusted until Sharpcap said excellent Polar alignment. So my next step was to do a 3 star alignment I was using a program called Explorer Stars to achieve this, so when I asked the mount to slew to the first star it was way off even in the finder scope, is that normal? So I used the controls to get the star in my FOV and centred it, it was the same for the next two stars way off. so I did the same. I finished the 3 star alignment and when I asked the mount to find an object the object was not centred it was bottom right of the quick photo I took. I've made sure all the information is correct by setting my Longitude and Latitude and also made sure my time is correct, the mount is balanced and level and pointing North. I think I'm doing something wrong somewhere. Also may I ask should my counterweight bar be parallel with the mounts front leg? I have two little arrows on the mount that should be pointing at each other when in the home position but when they are the counterweight bar is pointing to the right quite a fair bit. I'm new to all this only been doing it for a few months so a lot of things are quite confusing. Thanks in advance Bill.

The QHYCCD PoleMaster polar alignment system is generating a lot of interest and it certainly seems to work very well indeed. The process is very simple and following the on-screen prompts makes it quite easy to achieve a very good polar alignment but the instruction manual does come in for a lot of criticism. Sooooooo ....... I''m sure you can guess what's coming ....... My own version of the Polemaster manual - enjoy! PoleMaster User Manual English UK Northern Hemisphere.pdf

I am forced to use the drift method alignment from my back garden due to a neighbouring building being between Capella and me. So I have been practising the drift alignment method. I have however ran into a problem, and no amount of googling has provided me with the answer. so I am hoping that someone can help me out in understanding what could be the issue or what I could be doing wrong. The problem that I am experiencing is that the objects in my viewfinder are drifting backwards. i.e. they are slowing disappearing off my screen on the lefthand side. There is no drift upwards or downwards that I can detect thought. The drift is slow enough to allow me to take a picture of up to around 4 seconds without the stars looking out of shape. But at 10sec or higher, the drift is quite clear. Does anyone have an idea or suggestion for me to try?