Syncscan alignment

[jasonp]

Sorry if this has been over said, but i always seem to struggle with alignment.

Am i right in saying that if the mount is level and in the home position.. pointing north i should get the first alignment star at least roughly right ?

When i say home position the weight bar is pointing north, so is the OTA and i can see polaris through the finderscope and polarscope ( i only put in in the middle of the polarscope as only observing)

When i slew to my first star its way off!

Assume i live in Regents park london.

Therefore entering in the controller..

Date .. 11/19/2011

Time ....

Co ord 51.32N 00 9W

Day Savings .. No

Is that correct ?

Any help appreciated.

Many Thanks

[Budgie]

The Astronomy Shed videos are very good watching, I think there's 7 parts to the setup.

astronomyshed's Channel - YouTube

The first star may be a little out of the FOV and you can either use the handset to bring it in, or unlock the clutches and manually move the mount to the correct position.

But have a watch through the videos and they helped me understand the process a lot better.

[ronin]

If you centre polaris then the scope is just over a degree off of due north. Therefore if the magnification is 25x or more, assuming a plossl, then the first star would, I think, be out of the field of view even if the scope went to the right place relative to the set up.

If the scope is 200 f/5, 1000 FL, then starting out with a 40mm eyepiece is boarder line.

No matter which scope you really use the field of view is small. Thinking about it why people say f/5 scopes are for wide fields is a bit of a question. The field of view is the eyepiece field divided by the magnification. The F number isn't part of the equation, the focal length is. So a 20mm eyepiece in a 200 f/5 scope will have a narrower field of view then the same eyepiece in an f/6 150mm scope.

Get the polar scope out.