aligning a HEQ5 pro synscan

[stickbow]

Hi All

I picked up the above mount today for my Skywatcher 150 pro Mak.

I have just spent 4 hours trying to align it, i am using a halfords powerpack 20 amp hour to power it.

1st question may sound daft but during daylight you can see the small circle in the polar scope in which you put polaris but when its dark you cannot see the small circle so how can I polar align it.

2nd As I lined up north fairly well with a compass and set the scale to 52 degrees on the head I tried to do a star alignment both 1 and 2 star but the telescope lined up on north east for arcturus which is west from where I live and any other star alignment had similar problems, any ideas?

3rd Are we in daylight saving at the moment (I said no on the handset)

4th The location for where I live is 52, 13,4 N 0,54,14 W, On the handset I put this as 000,54,W 52,13, N for some reason there are 3 zero's in the west co-ords on the handset.

5th Is it important to set the scope in park posistion before trying to align it (this I did not do)

The time and date was correct (date was in American format month, day, year) and the timezone was at +00.00.

Thanks for any help.

[Stephen]

1) There should be a red LED inside the polar scope tube, it illuminates it when powered

2) See next answer

3) Yes

4) There needs to be three zeros as you could be greater than 100 degrees west or east

5) Yes, the scope assumes its in the park position when you turn it on

[stickbow]

Thanks for the speedy answers.

I almost broke my neck looking up through the polar finder but I could not see any red dot and barely any stars, is there an easy way to look through the polar finder?

[Stephen]

Thanks for the speedy answers.

I almost broke my neck looking up through the polar finder but I could not see any red dot and barely any stars, is there an easy way to look through the polar finder?

Unless you bodge a webcam onto the end then no, I'm afraid you have to get down to it.

You should be seeing a red hue across the field of view, it can sometimes be too bright!

There's a setting in the utilities menu to control the brightness of the light, I'd check that isn't set to something stupid by default

[stickbow]

Thanks I will check it out, last night I could not see anything from the top or the bottom (I had turned the scope to open up the hole and i used a torch to make sure it was open for the scope) but this morning I can see a red led looking down from the top of the scope and a red hue looking up the scope.

Thanks again

[Spikey]

To save yourself the Skywatcher limbo dance If you fully extend the legs on your HEQ5 you might be able to sit on a small chair or low stool to view through the polar scope reticule.

[StuW]

Thanks I will check it out, last night I could not see anything from the top or the bottom (I had turned the scope to open up the hole and i used a torch to make sure it was open for the scope) but this morning I can see a red led looking down from the top of the scope and a red hue looking up the scope.

Thanks again

The polar scope only illuminates when the mount is switched on.

[bobgunnis]

Hi You can buy a small red illuminator to fit you scope from this link AWR Technolgy and this should provide the illumination to see the Pole star through th Polar Scope

[stickbow]

Thanks red Dwarf I found the setting for the polar scope, it was set on 100% and drowned out any stars so I dropped it down to 2% and polar aligned the scope which was fairly easy, then did a 2 star alignment and that was sucessfull so I did a tour and saw a few galaxies, these were fuzzy blobs but the moon was almost full and illuminating the whole sky.

I noticed that the stars and galaxies I told it to goto were not in the center of the viewfinder, they were all a little low and I had to tweek the scope to get them centered, is this normal or am I doing something else slightly wrong. All in all I had a great time last night for about 3 hours and then the cloud came in.

Thanks for all the replies

[stickbow]

That should be thanks to Stephen who is a Red Dwarf, sorry about that