Polar aligment and park posistion

[stickbow]

Hi there

I went out last night after loads of reading to look around, I have a heq5 with goto system so I set up the scope and aligned it roughly north, I then polar aligned it and here is the problem, I turned the scope axis until the small Polaris circle was at 10' o clock as Polar finder said this was the correct posistion. I then adjusted the scope using the four bolts until Polaris was in the small circle, all well so far but the manual shows and says, to start aligning the scope, first park it with the weights and scope facing north so I swung the weights and scope to face north(Not sure if I should have moved it off Polaris!) so I put in lat and long, time etc and asked it to do a 2 star aligment and it was way off, the stars were only just in the finder scope and no where in the eye piece so I had a bad night for a few hours and missed a lot. So should I park the weights and scope facing north after polar aligning it, or leave Polaris in the small circle and only point the scope toward north.

All help is greatly appreaciated. cheers.

[nmoushon]

After I polar align my mount to Polaris I then swing the RA and DA so they are all in a straight line. Like you would when you are about to pack it up. I dont have any weights or my scope on it while Im polar aligning. After I align is when I put that all on. Then I go to the hand control and enter all the data and do 2 star align. If you enter all your data correctly and have polar align correctly the mount should slew somewhat closely to the star. To me it sounds that you might have been a bit off on your polar alignment or accidentally put in the wrong coords for your location. I've accidentally hit the wrong numbers before. Sometimes the mount just goes nuts and swings to the wrong part of the sky for me and I just restart the mount and that usually takes care of it. You could try this next time if you think its way off but sounds more like a slightly misaligned or accidentally hit a wrong number in the coords.

[valleyman]

You use the adjusting bolts for fine adjusting to Polaris, Then unlock the RA and DEC clutches to bring the scope back to the Home position,

Weights over the leg facing North and OTA also pointing North. Once you have polar aligned you must not move the the Tripod or Mount.

Put in all the info regarding date location etc, and select 2 or 3 star alignment.

Unless you are perfectly level and perfectly aligned there will be some error when you goto the first alignment star. Use the control arrows on the handset to center the 1 st star then press ENTER and the scope will go to the 2nd star.

Again it may be a bit out but center it again using the Handset arrow keys and select ENTER. if you selected 2 star align it should now show Alignment succesful. If you are 3 star aligning then repeat the same again,You should be close to the 3rd star but may still need some adjusment.

Hope this helps

[Tinker1947]

If you can mark the spot where the Tripod legs stand, so when its packed away you can put it back where it was, i used a small masonry bit to mark the patio slabs all i do now from time to time is adjust the bubble so it matched where Polaris happened's to be on the circle, on the GoTo align with your wide angle EP, then change to a High Power (low mm) and repeat this will give a better alignment.

[Daniel-K]

somtimes its off because your just off the home potion if its visual i wouldnt worry to much just slew that sucker into the middle of the ep i find a 8mm is best and same again for the 2nd star and bam your set

[steppenwolf]

Assuming that you have correctly polar aligned your mount, the key to a one, two or three star alignment is a perfectly correct 'start' of 'home' position.

This not easy to determine by eye but there is an easy way to correct that. Select 'two star alignment' but instead of aligning on your alignment star using the hand control movement keys, wait for the mount to stop moving. When it has stopped, apparently in the right place, undo the RA and Dec clutches and manually push and pull the telescope around the two axes until the first alignment star is correctly centred in the telescope's field of view. Now clamp the two clutches and accept the alignment. You have now fooled the mount into believing that it started with a perfect start position. Now do the second star alignment but this time, centre the alignment star using the hand controller's movement keys and accept the alignment.

At the end of your session, park the mount using the 'Park' command from the hand controller and when it has stopped moving, stick a label on the RA axis and another adjacent to it on the mount's body and mark a common line on the two so that you can match this position on subsequent sessions. Finally loosen the Dec axis setting circle and set it to 90 degrees.

On subsequent sessions, carry out an accurate polar alignment then match the two marks on the RA axis, rotate the Dec axis until it reads 90 degrees and you will be in a pretty good start position to carry out the one, two or three start alignment for each session.

[stickbow]

Hi Guy's

Thanks for that info I will try it when we get another clear night (after christmas maybe).