How do you get a skywatcher 250px to track?

[jay2jay99]

Hi all, I setup my telescope last night filor the first time, I was pleased as punch to see Jupiter and it's four main moons, only annoying thing is that I couldn't get it to track for the life of me?? I moved the telescope making sure i finished with the up and right keys to keep the gears engaged, I pressed the guide and slow buttons, the lights flash to say it was accepted and then the slow button would flash but looking through the eyepiece nothing happened, Jupiter just sailed past! I listened to the motor and could hear nothing. Am I doing something wrong? was something meant to be setup before? I did see about setting up the lat and long, but it said that was for accurate tracking, plus I didn't know what my position was, how to find out and how to enter it really as the instructions weren't overly clear.

Any ideas what the issue could be?

[jay2jay99]

Oh, just to add I was using it with a mains power supply that came with the scope, I've seen others post before that low batteries can cause issues in tracking.

[Wildwood]

I don't have the handset in view but once lined up it's buttons slow and medium that are pressed together to track. Hope that helps.

[jay2jay99]

Yeah I pressed them, no tracking happens, the planet just drifts by. You have Guide, Slow and Fast, I press Guide and Slow together as per the manual.

[vulcan]

To be able to track objects, your mount has to know exactly where you are (latitude and longitude) or city, what the local time is and then you have to polar align if it is a GE mount (have the mount pointing to Polaris or thereabouts) and then you have to point it at (preferably) three known stars as far apart as possible. The accuracy with which you carry out these setups determines how accurate your GOTO is.

[Wildwood]

This is what I do and it works for me:

Turn the scope on

Level the tube pointing north

Turn it off

Turn it back on again

Centre on object to track

Press Guide and slow

Did you set your latitude on first use?

[Telrad]

Some advice I've read given a while back by Kim:

Buttons 1 and 2 pressed together toggle tracking on/off.

Buttons 2 and 3 together set the altitude (switch on at 0 degs first).

With tracking on 1 - sets slew to 1x, 2 - sets slew to 4x, and 3 - sets slew to 8x.

With tracking off 1 - sets slew to - 32x, 2 - sets slew to 64x, and 3 - sets slew to 600x.

(1x being sidereal or tracking rate)...works for me

[jay2jay99]

To be able to track objects, your mount has to know exactly where you are (latitude and longitude) or city, what the local time is and then you have to polar align if it is a GE mount (have the mount pointing to Polaris or thereabouts) and then you have to point it at (preferably) three known stars as far apart as possible. The accuracy with which you carry out these setups determines how accurate your GOTO is.

This is just an auto mount so no goto functionality. I don't think it's possible to enter most of that stuff as it has no screen.

[jay2jay99]

Sorry Wildwood and Telrad, I was looking on my phone and completely missed your posts. I didn't set the latitude before hand as I didn't know it at the time, the instructions just implied that it wasn't as accurate without it but not that it wouldn't work. With the help of google earth I now have entered my lateral position, I've got the telescope setup in my livingroom and have turned tracking on, I'll come back in 10min and see if it's moved.

That's one thing I don't understand, you have different speeds when tracking..... but everything moves at one speed doesn't it? Why do you have 3?

[jay2jay99]

SUCCESS!! Just thought I'd share in case other newbs have the same issue!

I spent some time this evening looking into why I couldn't track, it turns out there were 2 issues, the first was the fact that I had read somewhere that you could move the auto dobsonians by hand to get them closer to your intended target quicker, I didn't feel comfortable doing this with the motors on so I turned them off, moved the scope to a star and turned it on again, so after re-reading the manual again, I realised the scope now thinks it's pointing north so it's expecting the starts to move across the sky but they are actually moving verticly as well!

Once I corrected my mistake the object would stay in the eyepiece view (a 35mm and 2x barlow) for around 10 - 15min before it disappeared off the edge, with no tracking it would take about 2 min to disappear from view, so progress, but still not quite there really. After setting up again from scratch I lowered the telescope so the latitude scale was on 0 again and noticed the telescope drifting down under it's weight! I removed the barlow lens and it stopped! So I fixed on a star again (without the barlow), turned on the tracking and after 15min it was still sitting in the center on the eyepiece! Well chuffed now! So I guess I'm gonna have to look into counterweights!

Now just need to wait until Jupiter rises at a decent time!

[kniclander]

That's one thing I don't understand, you have different speeds when tracking..... but everything moves at one speed doesn't it? Why do you have 3?

moving slightly off-topic but whilst all things that are really far away move at the same speed relative to us, don't the moon, planets and sun move at different speeds (and the planets slightly different speeds to each other I guess)

[jay2jay99]

moving slightly off-topic but whilst all things that are really far away move at the same speed relative to us, don't the moon, planets and sun move at different speeds (and the planets slightly different speeds to each other I guess)

Not really, they do but ever so slightly, I've got an app for my iPhone, StarWalk, it's amazing for stargazing, allows you to find planets/stars/constellations etc in seconds, you can fast forward that to see the sky's movement and everything moves at pretty much close to the same speed and direction. I think the moon is the most 'out of sync' with the rest of the sky but doesn't move that much over the course of the night.

I found out that the 'Guide' button is used to track objects and the 'Slow' and 'Fast' buttons are used to catch up with objects that are drifting off so maybe this is where they are used.

But seriously, anyone that has an iPhone and is into astonomy needs this app, I've learnt soooo much from it, Solarwalk is good to!