Doing it wrong or expecting too much...?

[ibraidwo]

There is a thread on here called az-goto, what the manual doesnt tell you' with some helpful stuff in it.

I did a search and found this thread

A useful thread with some useful links to charts and tools.

Is this the one you meant?

Thanks,

[Aenima]

I did a search and found this thread http://stargazerslou..._ synscan tips

A useful thread with some useful links to charts and tools.

Is this the one you meant?

Thanks,

Yup thats the one.

It has some good stuff in it, although you have to pick and choose to find things not already mentioned before.

I'm no expert on this matter but anything you are unsure of - if I can help in any way drop a post or msg, no worries.

Clearskies.

Regards

Aenima

[ibraidwo]

I should have done more thread searching before posting this one. I just read a tip about PAE:

"You can also use the PAE function to improve GOTO accuracy on any particular part of the sky - simply select a bright star near the object you are looking for and hold down the ESC key for two seconds - recenter the star using the arrow keys and press enter. Then GOTO the desired object. This improves the mounts model of the sky."

I'll definitely try that one. And alos ones about aligning stars from the same direction to remove any accuracy errors due to slack in the gears.

[Aenima]

Yeah, I do pae every other slew, just to keep the goto 'informed' as it were. I have had the 130p a while now and find that with deepsky objects I can just about make out a grey smudge with most 'sights' from the 'Deep sky tour' feature but this is the small aperture of the 130mm scope not the goto itself thats the problem. With DSO's its a sore realisation that mainly a huge aperture is needed for the majority of deepsky objects - unless you use cameras to image them and process them afterwards , its probably best to look up some nice binocular targets(pleiades/beehive cluster/globular cluster type) which will appear quite well through the 130p. You'll find more as you go.

Everything will come with time.

Planets make excellent objects to 'test' your allignment as they move a lot throughout the night and rechecking by slewing back to a planet every now and then will keep the goto up to date.

Best of luck,

Aenima

[GiveMeSomeSpace]

The important factor in the mounts goto abilities is the amount of slack/ backlash in the gearing, if you centred on Jupiter then slewed off elsewhere then when you went back to jupiter it was'nt in the field of view then forget all the other reasons, that can only be down to backlash, on the Celestron mount you can adjust a little for it by entering the amount the motor backtracks on itself to attempt to compensate for this, again this boils down to what I said before about tolerences etc. To see just how much backlash is evident in these mounts put in a high mag eyepiece, slew to an object then whilst looking into the eyepiece slew back the oppposite way, see how long it takes for the object to move in the eyepiece!!!, thats the amount of slack in the system! Now imagine this error in slack building up upon numerous moves!.If you really want to make use of the goto, work out the best settings for backlash, try to plan your viewing so your always slewing in the same direction, do your initial alignment following same principles and approach your manual slewing/ alignment from the same direction as the motor does when it is doing it's goto function.

[CSM]

Yes - I definitely set the time right, selected +0.00 and DST set to yet.

It's just 1 hour not 2!!! Or maybe that was just a typo?