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SkyAlign help needed!

Christopher Winstone1986

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Christopher Winstone1986

Christopher Winstone1986

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Hello to anyone willing to help this newbie! :smiley:

I can't for the life of me get SkyAlign to work. After putting in all the details it says its successfully aligned, so I choose a target but it points no where near where it should. And I mean always completely wrong.

Ive tried the auto one (point at three brightest stars, even tried using the moon) and the two star one. I always try and choose stars that are far from each other. Both confirm my targets and say successful alignment. It can't be how accurate I center the stars in my eyepiece so it must be the settings I'm inputting. (Please correct me if I'm being an idiot :smiley: )

i input the correct time and date ( making sure the days and months aren't mixed up) but the two that throw me are 'daylight savings/normal time' and 'zones'. I've tried both daylight savings and normal and I've chosen 'Universal timezone'. I live in Cambridge, uk and am close to London. Is this right?

Apologies if this hasn't made much sense but I'd greatly appreciate some help from people who know a great deal more than me.

If it helps I use a celestron nexstar 130slt and 17mm lens when finding stars to align.

Thanks in advance!

Chris

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Ags

Ags

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Are you sure you batteries have enough charge left - that can make the mount go crazy. Have you tried a solar system align on jupiter - that can hardly go wrong, assuming you have input a correct city and the mount is level. Then you can add a second alignment star manually.

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Helen

Helen

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Hi Chris, and welcome to SGL :smiley:

A couple of things to check are that the mount is fairly level, you don't want daylight savings (that's British Summertime to us), on timezone, choose GMT/UT, check your location (Celestron tends to be factory set to California and its timezone I think), and check that the time is entered correctly either in 24 hour clock or AM/PM. (It doesn't sound like you've made the very common error of inputting the month and day the wrong way around :angel: ). I'd choose 2-star or 3-star align. When centering use a low power eyepiece first and then a higher power one to ensure the star is really centred.

If this doesn't work come back and I'll have another think!

HTH

Helen

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Christopher Winstone1986

Christopher Winstone1986

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Are you sure you batteries have enough charge left - that can make the mount go crazy. Have you tried a solar system align on jupiter - that can hardly go wrong, assuming you have input a correct city and the mount is level. Then you can add a second alignment star manually.

Cheers for the advice, i could give the new batteries thing a try but they haven't been in for that long (previous set lasted loads longer). I can't input a city, they only show American ones. Could this be a software thing maybe?

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Ags

Ags

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That is your problem. The city sets your angle relative to the sky so the USA is hours out of alignment. I am certain you can enter UK cities but it has been a while since I did this. You could choose a US city at your latitude and enter a suitable time - but this would lead to headaches:-) best to fid the UK cities, they are in there somewhere... Also, you can enter a latitude and longitude....

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Christopher Winstone1986

Christopher Winstone1986

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Hi Chris, and welcome to SGL :smiley:

A couple of things to check are that the mount is fairly level, you don't want daylight savings (that's British Summertime to us), on timezone, choose GMT/UT, check your location (Celestron tends to be factory set to California and its timezone I think), and check that the time is entered correctly either in 24 hour clock or AM/PM. (It doesn't sound like you've made the very common error of inputting the month and day the wrong way around :angel: ). I'd choose 2-star or 3-star align. When centering use a low power eyepiece first and then a higher power one to ensure the star is really centred.

If this doesn't work come back and I'll have another think!

HTH

Helen

Thanks Helen,

it doesn't say GMT/UT for me :sad: just zones 1 to 14 a couple of American locations then zones -1 to -4. No idea what it all means.

Im from South Wales too btw, heading to Brecon over Christmas twitch my telescope, should be amazing!

cheers

Chris

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Helen

Helen

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OK, just had a look at my SE (probably not the latest firmware, but hopefully close enough)

When you hit enter to align it shows you the time. At this point hit Undo - it will then give you the option to either input your lat and long or by hitting Undo again show you the cities list. By selecting Cities it first comes up with United States, but you can go down and the next choice is International. Under International you choose a country (England) and then London. You say you only have the US cities option, but I assume that you can also choose international from that point (whether you went via the Undo method or not).

An alternative way is to choose undo at the start point and then hit Menu, scroll until you get to Scope Set Up, and then you can choose all the options for location, time etc.

At least you cna try these indoors in the warm :grin:

Helen

PS you also need this site http://www.nexstarsite.com/

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Christopher Winstone1986

Christopher Winstone1986

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OK, just had a look at my SE (probably not the latest firmware, but hopefully close enough)

When you hit enter to align it shows you the time. At this point hit Undo - it will then give you the option to either input your lat and long or by hitting Undo again show you the cities list. By selecting Cities it first comes up with United States, but you can go down and the next choice is International. Under International you choose a country (England) and then London. You say you only have the US cities option, but I assume that you can also choose international from that point (whether you went via the Undo method or not).

An alternative way is to choose undo at the start point and then hit Menu, scroll until you get to Scope Set Up, and then you can choose all the options for location, time etc.

At least you cna try these indoors in the warm :grin:

Helen

PS you also need this site http://www.nexstarsite.com/

hi Helen,

you were right, I hit back and it gave me the options to set my lat/lon and choose a city. I choose the city closest to me that was listed (which was London) and used the two star align. Align successful so I choose Jupitor as my first target as it is so easy to identify. It pointed in the right direction, slightly off, but I felt I was getting somewhere then... my batteries died on me haha

can't do anything for now but I think I should be ok once I get stocked up on batteries!

Thanks again Helen you have helped lots!

Chris

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