Star alignment with synscan 127 mak

[Russe]

Hi,

Got major trouble with my synscan AZ goto mount's star alignment. I have a mak127.

I tried both 2 & 3 star alignment. I usually go for stars on opposite sides of the sky. But already after aligning the scope doesn't manage to go back to the original alignment stars.

The mount is level with the ground and only 21 cm extended. The scope is balanced.

The only thing I haven't tried is turning on Daylight savings.

Otherwise, the settings are accurate.

Maybe I use the wrong stars?

Do I take too long? (3-5 minutes.)

[cosmological]

Have you set it to the correct longitude and latitude?

[Russe]

Yes. I think. Shall look again...

[Karen]

If you havn't set the time accurately it will go looking for objects which have already gone out of field or not arrived yet.

[Karen]

And I always check the level using a proper spirit level across the top of the tripod in two directions before attachng the motor unit

[izakimak]

Did this happen last night?

[Russe]

This always happens ever since day one last year. I've levelled how not and aligned until the next morning (...)

I mean, I don't really need the goto function but it would be nice if I got it working, but it's always off centre. The object appears just about in the 25mm eye piece... And after a while just about in my finder scope... Strange. Especially if I have just used alignment stars and on checking back it can't centre on them...

[cosmological]

Idealy you'd want to be using stars that are on or close to the celestial equater, the further north they are the less accurate the goto is.

[izakimak]

Reason I asked about when it happened, is that I had huge goto accuracy issues that night.

[matsey]

Some suggestions of things to check - all tips I picked up myself from this forum when I started out with my goto:

- make sure the location coordinates are correct. If you've got a sat nav you should be able to get them from that otherwise I think google maps will give you your long/lat (though I can't remember how! - on my phone right now so can't check..)

- make sure you're entering the date in the American format of mm/dd/yy - VERY comment mistake us Brits make is using dd/mm/yy!!

- daylight saving: you should only set this to "yes" during british summer time, right now it should be set to "no".

- centring the alignment stars: start with a low power eyepiece but use a high power to do the final centring as that will make it a lot more accurate. Also it helps to slightly de-focus the star to make it larger as that makes it easier to tell if it's centred. On a side note on centring... I've got a high powered (9mm) eyepiece with illuminated crosshairs which makes this step so easy and quick... they're not that cheap though and while personally I wouldn't be without mine I'd still advise trying the other steps first before splashing out.

Hope that helps a bit and you get it sorted soon.

Matsey

[Russe]

Thanks for the moral support... Will try again...

[DoctorD]

Hi Russe

It's very important that you enter your coordinates and time accurately and that you have the daylight saving set correctly.

You can get accurate time from the internet:

Current local time in United Kingdom – England – London

You can get your location from google maps - just right click on your location and select "What's here" - this will return the coordinates in decimal format.

These need to be translated to degrees minutes E/W degrees minutes N/S

So for instance if google returns

53.790985,-1.756082 (note thats lattitude, longitude)

Use this page to translate from decimal to degrees minutes:

Convert Latitude / Longitude in Degrees/Minutes/Seconds to/from Decimal (FCC) USA

For the example above this returns

Latitude 53° 47' 27.5454" Longitude -1° 45' 21.8946"

You'd enter 1 45 E 53 47 N (note enter longitude then latitude)

Positive latitude numbers are North (N) and positive longitude numbers are South (S)

Negative lattitude numbers are South (S) and negative longitude numbers are East (E)

Hope this helps

Paul

[Russe]

Will try, if It ever stops raining...