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[dtr42]

hi

was wondering if anyone can help me set this up properly.

last night i set up scope[level and pointing north] entered my coordinates [used heavens above] synscan asks for w and n

so put it in as 004 [was 33 degrees so changed that to 07mins from degrees to minutes couldnt find the minus for it ie -004 33 becomes 004 07 minutes w so is that wrong? then north was 55 883 which i changed to 55 15 n [ 88 degrees is roughly 15minutes [360 -88 degrees is = to 15minutes if my maths is right so am i totally wrong so far ?

synscan asks for north hemisphere etc

find actarus using key pad centre on it using telrad and 32mm then 15mm then 10mm till it was centred. vega was the second star but when it slewed to it it was totally wrong [ended uppointing northwest instead of high south/slightly east so centred it using the keypad align fail came up .

reset and tried vega got it in scope then went for actarus wasnt in ball park realigned using keypad failed align

anyideas what i have done wrong ??

[Cornelius Varley]

I can confirm that you have got your coordinates wrong. The centre of Glasgow is 004 15W, 55 52N, this wouldn't cause much of a problem Have you checked that you have the date in the correct format mm/dd/yyyy, time in 24hr format, time zone 0 000 and DST is on ?

Peter

[dtr42]

thanks for that . the centre of glasgow is those coordinates but i stay to the south and a bit east of city centre so its pretty close to where i am . I set the date as 07/20/2012[lastnight ] time was 2330[11.30pm]had scope pointing north [compass ] and level [with bubble level] got actarus no prob but it would not align to vega ended up pointing north west instead of south east ish maybe i was tired last night will try again next clear night

thanks for the suggestion

[Capricorn]

004 33 becomes 004 07, ---- 04 33 becomes 04 20.

55 883 which i changed to 55 15 n, ----- 55 883 becomes 55 53

So a little out on the minutes, but it shouldn't have caused the problem.

Date looks OK,

Time is OK only if you set DST = ON when asked. Otherwise you are 15 degrees out.

Check the Timezone, it should be 0 or 00.

These system will/can default to the Pacific side of the US for their timezone so could be 120 degrees out.

If these do nothing then hit the reset button , wipe everything and start over again. Sometimes once an item of data is set you cannot get at it to change it easily

[skywatcher250]

hey - i had all the same issues ! spent a couple of nights trying to sort it, as long as you have Daylight savings on, month first then date, and the co-ords correct (check iPhone compass IOS app for a good 2nd backup and also google maps online) then you just need to make sure you get the right star in the finder... sounds silly but the first time i somehow had the viewfinder knocked out and it showed the wrong star...with a similar magnitude unluckily

some stars (i.e. polaris) don't seem to work in synscan properly - when i do mine i always use arcturus and vega as you did - always works every time... check the daylight savings is set to yet as i didn't see you write that on your initial post ?

it is possible the software may be wrong - they do occasionally not work as intended... maybe worth checking 2 other stars ?

[dtr42]

ok guys thanks. i think it was a couple of things [my telrad was out by a bit [wife had tried the adjuster to see what it would do friday ,found this out this morning when i set it up to check the alignment of scope/telrad and got the ohh if you twist the little buttons does it change something ] secondly had typed in -005 instead of -oo4 so was a bit out . think the 2 problems ended up with me zooming my ep onto what wasn't acturus but another star [thought it looked a bit dimmer than it should ,just like me lol] and trying to get vega wasnt even close .