Skywatcher 200P Advice

[GregD]

Hi all,

Well, I eventually took the advice given here and bought myself the Skywatcher 200P with the HEQ5 mount. Good time to buy it in June when it only gets dark for a couple of hours!!

I took it on holiday to France with me a couple of weeks ago (only took up half the car!) and eventually got it set up and working. Took me a whole evening before I found you could only see through the polar alignment scope if you had the tube in a certain position!

Just a couple of queries, when polar aligned properly, should it slew straight to the suggested star in the Synscan process, or does it just send you to the general area of the sky where that star is located? The latter happened to me and I manually centred it, the second star suggested was then spot on and it then found all the objects I asked to with no probs.

Secondly, what is the purpose of the illuminated bit in the polar alignment scope? I could not make out anything when it was lit up, so aligned it with it turned off and then flicked it on and off to check it was correct. Is this the right way to do it?

Thanks.

Greg

[Cornelius Varley]

The first star is usually a little off. The handset slews the telescope to the approximate postion of the star based on the information inputted into the handset (date, time, location) and the home position of the mount (counterweight pointing down, telescope pointing at the NCP, you then manually correct the position using the handset. The latest version of the mount has an adjustable recticle iluuminator which is controlled through the menus in the handset.

Peter

[LukeSkywatcher]

I dont own this scope but i have an 8SE and when i star align it (be it 1,2,3 stars), its not 100% on target. Its not far off but i do have to make manual ajustments. I think my RDF/finderscope may be slightly off which would explain the mis-alignment??????.

[Herbig]

Yes you have to turn the mount throuth 90 degrees to see anything through it, the shaft has a hole in it.

When I got my HEQ5 the plar scope illumination was set at 100%, I had to reduce this to 14%. This is done via the hand controller

in the hand set setting under polar scope LED from the Set up Mode menu. For some reason this is not mentioned in the instructions.

At 14% on my mount Polaris is about the only star in the area visible.

Hope this helps

[GregD]

Thanks for the replies. The instructions are a little sparse for such a complex beast!

Greg