Problems tonight

[Jiggy 67]

Took my 200p ds with pro goto out tonight for its first light, I've never used goto before so I've read as much as I could in preperation. I believe I inputted my date, time, daylight saving, longitude and latitude correctly. I tried 3 star alignement a number of times but couldn't get a succesfull alignement so I tried 2 star. I was successfull twice but when I selected an object, it was completely wrong, eg Saturn, the goto pointed the scope to the ground and M51, the Whirlpool Galaxy, according to the goto was in the South East, miles out. I'm sure that its a simple problem but I can't see what it is at the moment, anyone any ideas??, I have an EQ5 and I do remember that during the upgrade (I used the upgrade kit to upgrade the mount to goto) the istructions said to fit the dec motor to the opposite side of power unit then spin in dec so the dec motor is the same side as the power unit, would that have made a difference? Although polar alignement was only rough it wasn't that far off

After a couple of hours I decided to admit temproary defeat at the hands of the goto and decided to manualy slew to Saturn. For some reason it was really dim with no detail and I couldn't even seperate the rings from the planet!!...now I was gettin annoyed. I've viewed Saturn through my SW130P and it was always really bright and I could see a lot more than with the 200p ds. I tried a 9mm, 10mm and 16mm ep, all with and without 2x barlow but the result was the same...dim and no detail. What could be causing this? is it a collimation issue or something else?

Any hepl would be appreciated so I can at least learn from a disastrous night viewing

[david o]

I'm not totally sure on this, but I think that you might need to input the date in the American format - Month/Date/Year.

If you used the English format instead, that'd cause your slewing problem.

HTH

[Jiggy 67]

Thanks David but I made sure it was American....if only it was that simple..lol

[rawhead]

Don't know the EQ5 but is possible to have the CG5 in southern hemisphere mode?

How are you powering the mount? Batteries low on juice can produce erratic results.

Can't believe how dim Saturn was tonight. It eventually disappeared behind a bank of cloud. Don't judge your scope on tonight's performance

[Nexus 6]

I think rawhead has given some probable reasons for why you may have had some trouble, have you the option to set the time zone to universal time? that would be the way I set my old celestron 6se and it did slew erratically when I had missed a setting on the odd occasion of power was low.

[malc-c]

I had similar issue the 1st time I used mine. I found it was because I had the scope in the wrong park position. I find that if after polar aligning the scope you place it as if observing Polaris ( eg the weight bar is in line with the N leg of the tripod and scope pointing North) and then turn the sysnscan unit on this gives better results. Three star alignment requires the mount to be level and very good polar alignment. I tend to use two star alignment and then pick two stars that are in the reagion I want to observe eg Mizar and Duhbe in Ursor Major if I want to see M81 / M82 / M51. If I then find that alignment is out when I want to view something on the other side of the sky I run through the alignment process again, but with two stars in that area of sky, and then select the view object. Not perfect I know, but it works for me.

[Jiggy 67]

I had similar issue the 1st time I used mine. I found it was because I had the scope in the wrong park position. I find that if after polar aligning the scope you place it as if observing Polaris ( eg the weight bar is in line with the N leg of the tripod and scope pointing North) and then turn the sysnscan unit on this gives better results. .

Yeh I noticed that when I did park the scope it took the weight back to North but the scope ended up pointing East. I'm sure that everything, weights and scope, were pointing North when I turned the unit on. How do you set the "park" position??

[JamesM]

The 'Park Scope' option is under the 'utilities' the '3' button. Press that and wait for it to park the scope. Assuming that the scope ends up in a position which is not due north, turn off the set up, wait a few seconds and then undo the clutches and manually move the scope/counter weights into the correct aligned position (scope facing north over north tripod leg, counterweights hanging directly below, pointing to the ground but also in line with the scope) Now when you start up again you will have a scope who's position is now linked with the motors so that when you park it, it will return back to the starting point.

James

[LongJohn54]

After polar aligning the mount I've added the counterweights and scope then balanced it all. Forgetting to move the scope back to its home position I've simply started the 3 star alignment and wondered why the scope was pointing a mile away from where it should be. Annoyingly I've done this twice now.