Skymax 127 autotracking, diy goto

[sunshine185]

Hi, having made a setting circle for my old dob and having success with finding things, i decided to have a go doing something similar with the skymax i now have.I used a pertractor (sp?) and made a setting circle for az to go with the alt one thats already on the mount.Had a ten minute trial run last night, levelled the tripod, put on the setting circle, added the mount and scope then centred polaris in the super 25mm eyepiece.Then i attached a little marker above 0, levelled the scope and unplugged the power cable and plugged back in. using stellarium, i found the coordinates for jupiter and slewed the scope so the alt/az matched the coordinates.Looked in the finder and jupiter was slightly off centre, just outside the fov in the 25mm.pleased with the first attempt, i have printed out a more accurate setting circle today, now waiting for clearer weather to do another test. Will update after next trial run. Thnx for looking.

[sunshine185]

P.s sorry the pics are the wrong way round.

[singlespeedman]

not a bad idea and handy for when the scope just refuses to goto where it is meant to. Have you got a template you could link to for others to copy?

[sunshine185]

Hi, i used the template from this site Setting Circles - You are not logged in

Also, my skymax is just the auto tracking version, not the more expensive goto one, as you know, its a damn big sky out there and the narrow fov on thre mak makes finding things without a goto a little tricky, but if I can fine tune this thingy a little, then it will make finding the dimmer objects a whole lot easier. Thnx to peter I have now put in my correct longitude/latitude settings into stellarium so now just waiting for some clearer

Weather to do another test.

[yesyes]

Just a note...

Polaris is 0.7 degrees away from the true celestial pole. If you want to make it very exact you have to account for that. ;-)

[sunshine185]

Thnx yesyes, so if i set the az inbetween 0 and 1 it hopefully will be even more accurate. If i can get the target object in the fov of the 25mm, i will consider that a complete success.

[yesyes]

It's not that simple I'm afraid. Sometimes Polaris is to the west of the pole, sometimes east. It basi8cally circles around the pole. So you would need to know where it is relative to the pole at the time when you set the zero mark.

But I might be overcomplicating things.. ;-)

[Earl]

Id not worry that level of accuracy is for imaging, and if your doing that you wont be using one of these mounts.

[yesyes]

You're right. I think I got a little carried away... ;-)

[sunshine185]

defo not for imaging, is purely for visual use, lots of LP here in oldham so anything that helps location of objects is a bonus.it worked a treat on the dob, learning to star hop can be a bit tricky when there isn't many stars to see in the first place.

[dazd798]

defo not for imaging, is purely for visual use, lots of LP here in oldham so anything that helps location of objects is a bonus.it worked a treat on the dob, learning to star hop can be a bit tricky when there isn't many stars to see in the first place.

Hey, i'm looking into making one of these for my supatrak mount, what is the radius you used to create the template?

[sunshine185]

hi m8, the radius i used was 4, also, in the formatting options setting, i unticked "draw numbers". then i printed it out on a piece of card and marked out the degrees.then i cut out the middle bit, this should be a radius of 2.5 inches, then the card can sit on the tripod and the mount can then be placed in the middle of the card into the tripod. the last trial i did i set up as normal, then using stellarium, i got the co-ordinates for the andromeda galaxy and matched them up to the dials on my scope, had to do a very small slew to the left but i found it, was approx half a degree out roughly. I have also found out either the bubble level in my tripod is way out , or my spirit level is way out, am gonna get another level this weekend to find out which is wrong. in your 130p you can get close to a 2 degree fov i believe with a widefield EP, so you should have more success than me in lining things up. I still believe that success can be had with this, just need to do more tinkering when the weather clears. best of luck, shaun.

[dazd798]

hi m8, the radius i used was 4, also, in the formatting options setting, i unticked "draw numbers". then i printed it out on a piece of card and marked out the degrees.then i cut out the middle bit, this should be a radius of 2.5 inches, then the card can sit on the tripod and the mount can then be placed in the middle of the card into the tripod. the last trial i did i set up as normal, then using stellarium, i got the co-ordinates for the andromeda galaxy and matched them up to the dials on my scope, had to do a very small slew to the left but i found it, was approx half a degree out roughly. I have also found out either the bubble level in my tripod is way out , or my spirit level is way out, am gonna get another level this weekend to find out which is wrong. in your 130p you can get close to a 2 degree fov i believe with a widefield EP, so you should have more success than me in lining things up. I still believe that success can be had with this, just need to do more tinkering when the weather clears. best of luck, shaun.

Nice one thanks, i will have a go today at making one.