What am I doing wrong

[michaelg]

Ok so I take my synscan out the other night and set up my synscan using the summer triangle it was very easy and was able to align very easily however tonight I tried the same and when I lined my scope with any of the summer triangle and set to two star alignment ie I chose vega then my second star options would not show Deneb or altar if I aligned with altar it would not give me a second star option of vega or deneb

I had my finder scope aligned and was entering the correct time date and longitude latitude etc so why would my synscan not offer me the 2 star alignment options that it has in the past

Thanks

[mallorcasaint]

Were you out at the same time on the second night?

[michaelg]

No u was out an hour or so later

[mallorcasaint]

That may account for why the handset chose different stars.

[Capricorn]

It has reasons for the stars that it picks, usually where they are in the sky at the time and maybe the ones you expected were too close to being overhead, that North-South line through Polaris is generally avoided. Nice and easy for us, but disliked by the alignment algorithm.

Meade scopes tend to always try for Arcturus.

[valleyman]

Capricorn is spot o with the time issue. I always take a skymap out with me, You will get to learn new stars over time, but they have a nasty habit of moving each time you go out.

[SeedyF]

As above, stars overhead are not much use to you.

I try to avoid using stars so close together as you are using. My synscan manual recommends stars further apart than the three in the summer triangle. I try to go for 2 about 45 degrees apart if I can and at a resonably similar altitude at the time.