Newbie Nexstar 6SE help needed!

[cpives]

So got a Nexstar 6SE for my birthday two weeks ago. Due to the awful weather here in the UK, last night was the first night I've really had a proper chance to play with it. Had a quick play with it a few times before, but the weather was never good enough to stay out with it.

So out I go, make sure it is perfectly level, and away I go with alignment. This was easy enough, I did two star align, used Polaris as my first star, and then set the second star to be Arcturus (I'm well aware where it is). It starts slewing round towards it, but then carries on right past it, and just keeps on slewing. It didn't stop, so I pressed a direction button, and it allowed me to centre on Arcturus, and it aligned OK. I then got it to point towards Saturn, which it did with no problem. I didn't look to see how close it was, I'm aware where Saturn is in the sky, and could see it was pointing in the correct direction. PLayed around with it a little longer, and then asked it to slew towards Polaris. At this point it pointed pretty much 180 in the wrong direction. So I plugged in Saturn again, and the same thing happened. So I turned the scope off, and decided to align again, but this time I used skyalign, which was a success. I then wanted to look at the Hercules cluster, so I selected that on the handset, and off it goes. Looked through my 25mm eyepiece, and it was nowhere to be seen. Found it off to the left a bit, enough that it took a couple of seconds of slewing to find it. And then it didn't seem to be tracking it. I watched it slowly disappear towards the left of my view. Really don't know what I'm doing wrong.

These are my settings:

Time is UTC, Daylight saving (we are on British Summer Time here, 1 hour ahead of UTC, so I'm guessing Daylight Saving takes care of that....)

My position was taken from my Garmin GPS, so I know that was exact.

Tracking was set as Alt-Az and Sidereal.

What am I doing wrong!!! Could it be batteries dying???

Any pointers greatly appreciated.

Chris.

P.S. Hi to everyone!!!

[matsey]

Hi Chris,

Just wanted to say hi and let you know I've got a similar problem with alignment of my 6SE, though mine isn't slewing quite so far out of range as yours appears to.

One thing that did spring to mind when I read your post though, was whether you entered the date in UK or US format? In researching my problem, I read quite a few people in the UK got caught out by that.. the format needs to be mm/dd/yyyy.

Just an idea, and if it's not that, hopefully someone more experienced will come along and help us out

Matsey

[smudgeball]

Hi there (and welcome)

Date format is one to check.

When batteries die the 6SE is not very accurate.

Most owners on here have powertanks.

You've confirmed use of daylight saving. ( I got that wrong when I first started using mine )

I think date format is a favourite.

Worth doing a reset on the controller to rule that out.

Regards

Neil

[matsey]

And I'll second the recommendation for a powertank - my batteries barely lasted an hour the first night out!. I don't think you need to get anything fancy/expensive, I've got a "3-in1 portable jumpstarter" from Maplins (it was actually recommended to me by First Light Optics - thanks guys!), and that is working just fine for me.

Matsey

[Nexus 6]

Hi Chris, good answers given already, if you are using normal batteries it is probably down to them draining, you should get yourself a portable power tank or a regulated psu, Maplins do both, I started out with the 6se and had the same kind of thing happen, if you go for the power tank option make sure you keep the battery charged up too. The 6se is a brilliant scope! You'll have some great views of many objects which will be even better if you are lucky enough to live in a good dark sky location. Of course another handy thing about it is its small size so portability is no problem which means you can at least take it somewere you know has dark skies.

If you have'nt got one yet a dewshield is something you will definately need.

Good luck with it

[Slangers]

I agree with the other posters- power is likely to be a problem. You will run down normal batteries very quickly and then will have huge problems with tracking and alignment. I also suspect you have an issue with date format.

I always do a star align, but would never use Polaris. Suggest that you go for Vega and Arcturus at this time of year.

[cpives]

Thanks for the answers folks! Date format wasn't an issue - I spend a lot of time in the US, so anything from there I know to check the date format straight away!!! I think it's probably batteries......

[Donkeiller]

Had my 6SE and SE mount for a month. Worked first and every time since. Took great care with inputting of date, Lat/Long and levelling of mount. Also use a 17AH battery as power supply, plus internal batteries in case connector slips during slewing.

When you align (and I always use manual 2 star align on Vega and Arcturus), I defocus the stars in a 9mm EP to get them dead centre.

I find that setting up correctly makes a huge difference to "goto" accuracy. I learned by trail and error on a Synscan AZ mount- which now works brilliantly, but didn't when I first started.

[rowan46]

Don't know if this is applicable or not never use rechargeable aa batteries nexstar doesn't like the lower voltage.