HEQ5 Park Position and Re start

[lifeonmars]

Really started to get to grips with my Heq5 and Polar alignment and 3 star align,and am surprised by

its accuracy.

When i decide to go and have a break or something else crops up I select the park position from the

utilities menu which then prompts me to turn it off which i do.When I come back to it, and turn the power

back on it asks me do I want to start from the park position.If i answer yes,if I remember this correctly,it

goes to the set up menu and I then have to go through the whole Alignment process again..GRR

My question once I have parked the scope and come back to it having re- established the power should it still have the previous stored data in its memory and pick up from where it left off,thus saving me time and effort re aligning.I thought this was the idea of a park position.Am I understanding this correctly or am I missing something?.Any help would be greatly appreciated!!!!

[Steve Ward]

You need to re-align because of the time difference between finishing one session and starting again.

If you are accurate with the time input , seconds rather than a rough guess , the mount 'should' put you very close to the first star from "park"

Mine does . . .

[lifeonmars]

Thanks for that steve so you only had to put the time in precisely again ,and you didn`t have to go through the entire set up including 3 star align carry on?

So would i be right in saying that once you input the new time it compensates for the change in position?

[Jiggy 67]

When you select "park" and turn the power off Synscan will remember all your aligignement co-ordinates including the stars you have aligned to. When you swith back on, PROVIDING YOU HAVE NOT MOVED THE MOUNT IN ANY WAY, you can select "yes" to "start from park position" it will ask you for the time and date, so it can then work out the sky with the current time and date, together with the info from your previous star alignement.....there is no need to go through the star alignement again. In fact, it should skip all the alignement stages and go to setup, just in case you want to re-align again. If you answer "no" to the question you have to go through the whole procedure

[lifeonmars]

Thanks for that Jiggy,now I see ,even though i have only been away from the scope for an hour or so,if it was based in an observatory it could have been a week and I would have to input the new time and date for the system to work out the new position relative to the celestail sphere.When it asks me for the time and date I assumed it was going to go through the whole set up procedure DUHHHH!Thanks for all your help much appreciated.I will get there eventually!

[Jiggy 67]

To be honest, if I'm only walking away from the scope for an hour or two...to watch Coronation Street ( ) or a movie or something I just leave the scope tracking the last object I was viewing. Unless you've got power issues, there is no problem with that

[lifeonmars]

Yes Jiggy thats what I normally do just leave it tracking,but i just thought i would give parking the scope a try and see what happened,but it just seemed as if I was doing something wrong,and its just good to get to the bottom of it thanks again!

[dph1nm]

When you select "park" and turn the power off Synscan will remember all your aligignement co-ordinates including the stars you have aligned to. When you swith back on, PROVIDING YOU HAVE NOT MOVED THE MOUNT IN ANY WAY, you can select "yes" to "start from park position" it will ask you for the time and date, so it can then work out the sky with the current time and date, together with the info from your previous star alignement...

Except the one thing it (v3.32 anyway) doesn't do is enable tracking! So if you don't do a new alignment you have to remember to scroll through setup and enable sidereal tracking. Which is nuts!

NigelM

[lifeonmars]

Great stuff thanks for that nigel ,now all we need is clear skies