I can't find Polaris

[stickbow]

Hi All

Well I thought I had figured out my HEQ5 pro synscan, I polar aligned it and then moved the heat through 180 degrees and polaris stayed dead center of the small polaris circle. I then did a 2 staralignment and that was sucessfull.

I looked at different objects and most were at least in the view finder if not centered, however when I asked it to point to the moon it was way off and when I asked it to go to polaris it was in the edge of the viewfinder and no matter how I tried to tweek it using the control buttons it would not center the star in viewfinder or eye piece. Is this normal or have I done something wrong.

Still getting used to the HEQ5 but enjoying every minute of it.

Cheers..

[mallorcasaint]

Have you entered all the parameters correctly? Lat and Long and date/time in US format?

[stickbow]

yes I put in all the correct info and the date in American , Month Day Year and the Lat and long I got from my Iphone compass, so I think that the info is correct.

[mallorcasaint]

What about daylight saving?

[cantab]

With an equatorial mount Polaris is going to be in the "polar hole", where it's hard to point the scope because it takes a huge movement in right ascension to accomplish a small adjustment in telescope pointing. (On alt-az mounts the equivalent is the zenith hole.) I don't know if that has anything to do with the issues.

[brantuk]

Assuming all the input parameters are 100% correct - make sure you use the PAE on first half a dozen objects - that helps. And use a higher magnification when establishing polar alignment - it can look dead center at 25mm but the minute you pop an 8mm in it's gone way over to the lens edge or completely off it