Absolute beginners question - Celestron 4se

[Sky4bubbly]

Hi All,

First post and as you can see from the title, i am a newbie to all this. Hope daft questions are welcome - lol

Bought a Celstron 4se as i thought i'd rather be watching than trying to learn how to control a scope.

Pretty pleased with what i can see so far, Jupiter, Moon and things that i can find by eye. Imagine how i'll feel when i get some more eye pieces other than the 1 in the box.

Question is, i have had it for a few weeks now and cannot get the sky align to work. I set my location from Sterllarium but it never works. Before i go back to the shop, does anyone know of any real schoolboy errors i may be making ? The only thing i've read on other posts may be to go from batteries to a power pack.

Any help would be grately appreciated.

Many thanks

[onesmallstep]

Hi and welcome to SGL!

A club member was having the same problem ie, she couldn't get the alignment of her NexStar SE to fix on her location. It turns out she hadn't altered the time setting to BST so everything was an hour out hence the location discrepancy. Hopefully this is the fix, if not I'll go back to scratching my head!

HTH!

[Sky4bubbly]

Thanks for the welcome and the advice. I will double check. Hopefully it is something i missed in my quick 'scan' of the instructions.

[brantuk]

Hi Sky4 and welcome to SGL

A common mistake is to enter the date incorrectly - use the American format MM/DD/YY. You can use the menus to check this - and while you're at it check the timezone (and daylight savings as mentioned above)

[Ags]

Are you remembering to enter the date in American mm-dd-yyyy order?

I also find the three-star skyalign often fails. Doing a two star alignment works best for me. Alternately, do a solar system align on Jupiter or the Moon, then add another alignment star later on (you can add/swap alignment stars after the initial alignment).

By the way, I use batteries - I keep meaning to get a power pack, but never get round to it! You do see some odd behavior when the batteries run low.

[matsey]

Hi and welcome from me too

I've got the 6" version of the SE and was in exactly the same position struggling with the alignment when I first got my scope, but believe me, it will get easier and then it'll be all worth it.

Here's my tips from what I've learned, some of which has been mentioned:

- make sure date is in mm/dd/yyyy format

- make sure scope is level

- make sure the latitude/longitude are accurate for your location

- make sure the alignment stars are centred in the eyepiece. It's recommended that you do a final centring with a high powered eyepiece, but I see you've just got the one that came with your scope so far, so a good trick is to de-focus the star somewhat (so it's much larger.. it'll show as a large white circle with a smaller black circle in the middle).. that makes it easier to make sure it's centred.

- if you can identify for yourself two bright stars a reasonable distance apart, I'd also second the recommendation for doing the two star alignment as well... that's what I use now and it never fails.

and another +1 for getting a powerpack... using batteries won't affect the accuracy of the alignment, but your scope will behave very oddly when they start to run low, and when they run out completely you will have to do the alignment all over again !

Good luck, and don't worry you will get it working soon, it really does get easier !

Matsey

[Sky4bubbly]

Thanks folks - I think i will have to re read the instructions properly.

I used the quick start guide (keen to play with my new toy).

Hopefully it's a lack of patience on my part and not a problem with the scope.

[asteria]

Hi Sky4 - it's worth persisting, that's a nice scope and should do well on planetary and lunar.

Good luck. Ed